LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



CHRISTIAN 
TYPES OF HEROISM 

OF 

THE HEROIC SPIRIT UNDER 
CHRISTIANITY 



BY 



JOHN COLEMAN ADAMS, D.D. 






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J I 






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BOSTON 

UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE 
1891 



Sa» 



A3 



Copyright, 1890, 
By the Universalist Publishing House. 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



r 



TO MY WIFE, 

IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE HELP AND SYMPATHY 

SHE GAVE TO THE STUDIES FROM WHICH 

THIS LITTLE BOOK HAS GROWN, 

/ NOW DEDICATE IT 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Introduction 7 

I. 
The Martyrs 13 

II. 

The Apologists „ . 37 

III. 
The Hermits and the Monks 61 

IV. 
The Prelates and the Knights .... 87 

V. 
The Reformers 113 

VI. 
The Missionaries • . . 143 

VII. 
The Philanthropists 165 

VIII. 
The Statesmen 187 



Christian Types of Heroism. 



M. 



INTRODUCTION. 

ERNEST RENAN, ruminating upon 
the growing reverence for what 
are commonly styled the passive vir- 
tues, exclaims, " How feeble would be a 
society of perfect beings ! " His lament 
over the millennium is a condensation of 
what is unquestionably a wide-spread feel- 
ing about the militant types of ethical char- 
acter. The charge is frequently brought 
against Christianity that it bestows a spe- 
cial patronage upon the passive virtues, 
reversing the honors men have usually paid 
to those of the heroic type, and claiming 
for meekness the praise which once went 
to courage, and for self-sacrifice what used 
to be bestowed on personal force. Chris- 
\ tian ethics, it is said, do not encourage the 
Vjictive and aggressive qualities. The Chris- 
tian ideal lacks force. Its spirit deprecates 



8 Christian typts of fytvoi&m. 

the wrestling energy which has won all the 
world's battles. Its saints are feeble ; its 
code is unfriendly to the strong ; its mil- 
lennium is a reign of effeminacy. Once let 
the spirit of Christianity prevail, this criti- 
cism urges, and you will witness under its 
refinements the disappearance of the active 
virtues, the decline of physical courage, the 
prowess which shone in battle, the intre- 
pidity of manhood, the force which has 
overcome chaos and built a civilization. 
We shall see the type degenerate and per- 
haps disappear, and we shall only be al- 
lowed to honor the virtues of the warrior, 
the patriot, and the knight as the best 
products of a benighted past. 

But justice to Christianity demands a 
revision of this common judgment. It is 
deficient at two points. It is not true to 
the facts of Christian ethics nor to the 
facts of Christian history. It misconceives 
the real nature of the dispositions which 
Christianity inculcates and it is inconsis- 
tent with the actual manifestation of the 
Christian spirit in its historic develop- 
ment. A brief analysis of those virtues 
to which paganism gave an undue distinc- 
tion will discover in their constitution a 



31ntroDuctton* 9 

large admixture of what are known as 
the milder traits. A survey of Christian 
history will prove that there has been no 
falling off in the culture of a vital per- 
sonal force since the ethics of Calvary 
superseded those of the Platonist and the 
Stoic. 

Turning for a moment to the first of 
these propositions, I affirm that this ob- 
jection does not allow for the extent to 
which the passive virtues enter into the 
dispositions we call heroic. The passive 
virtues are not merely negative traits. 
The commonest types of active strength 
show a large admixture of the submissive 
forms of excellence. It costs as much to 
bear the pressure of adversity and the 
inertia of sluggish evils as it does to en- 
counter and to overthrow them by assault. 
Victory waits for the heart in which cour- 
age to attack mates with patience to wait 
and fortitude to endure. " Who does not 
suffer," says the proverb, " does not win." 
The strength which bears down opposition, 
which upsets and resists and encroaches and 
carries by storm, must be supplemented 
by the strength which can control self, 
endure, submit, concede, and bide the turn- 



io Christian &ppeg of heroism* 

ing of the tide. In the very field in which 
the martial and the patriotic virtues shine 
most brilliantly, underlying personal prow- 
ess, bold generalship, defiance of danger, 
is a strength knit up of implicit obedience, 
the abnegation of self, the submission of 
the subordinate to the superior will. The 
glory of the conqueror's crown shines with 
the mild lustre of the passive virtues. 

The spirit which won the civil war in 
America was as much obedience as valor, 
patience in the long campaign as cour- 
age in the charge. The characteristics 
of our country-men burned not more in 
the ardor which swept up the steeps of 
Lookout Mountain and crowned the hills 
of Gettysburg with invincible steel, than in 
the fortitude which kept the heart of pa- 
triotism unwasted through the privations 
of southern stockades. The tale of the 
nation's march to triumph in the later days 
of the war forms no more brilliant chapter 
in her history than the persistence, the 
steadfastness, the patience through dark 
days of defeat in the field and discourage- 
ment in the council-chamber. The moral 
stamina which decided that conflict was 
the fusion of vigorous manhood, which 



^introduction* 1 * 

took the field and flung life itself into the 
dripping scales of battle, and the endurance 
of womanhood, triumphing over fears and 
bearing the awful suspense in the silence 
of the home. 

The same things may be said of the men 
who in braving the perils of strange coun- 
tries have won the credit of daring, of en- 
ergy, of vigorous enterprise. They too 
mingle with their restless power the ster- 
ling elements which Christianity but pro- 
motes to their proper dignity. If an un- 
known continent is to be explored or men 
are sought to break the barricades of the 
polar zones, more is demanded than the 
ardor of ambition or the daring which loves 
great risks. Braided in with these must be 
the necessary traits of patience, self-denial, 
fortitude. The pathetic story of Columbus 
celebrates a patience worthy of the martyrs. 
But for the passive virtues which reinforced 
the resources of that intrepid soul, America 
might have awaited her discoverer another 
century and the rising life of the modern 
world been held in check a hundred years. 
And who does not see how near lie the 
Christian to the heroic virtues when he 
remembers that it was Livingstone the 



12 Christian ty$t& of S?erotem* 

missionary who became the explorer of 
the " dark Continent," and that it is Stanley 
the explorer who has blazed a path now 
trodden by the missionaries through the 
forests of West Africa? 

This, briefly, is the answer which may 
fairly be made upon the general principles 
of ethical characteristics to the charge that 
Christianity is debasing the stuff of which 
heroes are made. And if the charge be 
inconsistent with a true analysis of the 
character it fosters, we shall find a cumu- 
lative line of testimony in favor of the 
tonic character of Christian principles, 
traced in the memorials of the Christian 
centuries. To these records we appeal 
with confidence that we shall find that 
notwithstanding the growing refinements 
of the active virtues under the tutelage of 
Christianity, they suffer no diminution of 
force and brilliancy. 



I. 

THE MARTYRS. 



And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under 
the altar the souls of them that were slain for the Word 
of God, and for the testimony which they held. — Rev- 
vi. 9. 

Little they dream, those haughty souls 
Whom empires own with bended knee, 
What lowly fate their own controls. 

Keble : All-Saints' Day. 

Thus, also, said the other martyrs : Do what you will, 
for we are Christians and do not sacrifice to idols. — 
The Martyrdom of the Holy Martyrs, ch. iv. 

They trod beneath them every threat of man, 
And came victorious all torments through ; 
The iron hooks that piecemeal tore their flesh 
Could not their valorous souls subdue. 

Breviary. 



THE MARTYRS. 

*T*HE story of the early martyrs of Chris- 
tianity takes us back to the first great 
battle-ground on which Christian heroism 
was put to the test; and it would be 
difficult to find in the annals of the times 
in which these sacrifices were made in 
witness to the truth, any trial more severe 
to courage, endurance, and manly nerve. 
Those who espoused the cause of the cross 
were called upon to enlist in a service far 
more exacting than that imposed on any 
Roman soldier in all the Empire's legions. 
For they were engaged in a fight which 
ran from day to day and from year to 
year. It was a battle three hundred years 
long; and it was won at last through the 
unflinching courage and steadfastness of 
those who by conduct and by creed, in 
deed and in debate, convinced the heathen 
world that Jesus of Nazareth was the Sent 
of God. 



1 6 Christian typt8 of tyttoi&m. 

There is a legend of early Christianity, 
to be heard in every country from the 
Ganges to the Mississippi, which runs as 
follows. In the middle of the fifth century 
the owner of an estate near Ephesus acci- 
dentally discovered a sealed cavern on his 
land, in which to his astonishment were 
seven young men of aspect so strange that 
the slaves who opened the cave were terri- 
fied and fled. When the light fell upon 
the sleepers they arose and sent one of 
their number for food. As he journeyed 
toward the neighboring city he was struck 
by many unfamiliar sights, and when he 
came to stand in the streets of his native 
town it seemed like a metropolis of for- 
eigners. He entered a baker's shop and 
in payment for his bread offered a coin of 
the Emperor Decius, two hundred years 
out of circulation. The astonished shop- 
keeper arrested him as an owner of unlaw- 
ful treasure, and being arraigned before the 
court he told his affecting story. He and 
his six companions had taken refuge in 
that cave, as he supposed, the night before 
from the horrors of the Decian persecu- 
tion and were pursued and walled in by 
their foes. When the sun next fell upon 



t\)t spatters* 17 

them they rose and came forth. And in 
reply to this story he was astounded to 
hear that Decius had been dead two 
hundred years ; that for a full century pa- 
ganism had been supplanted by the per- 
secuted religion ; that the capital of the 
empire had been removed from Rome 
to Constantinople; and that these seven 
sleepers of Ephesus had come to life un- 
der the second Theodosius, a Christian 
emperor. Such is the legend of the Seven 
Sleepers of Ephesus; and it emphasizes 
with a remarkable picturesqueness the 
rapid changes which swept the ancient 
world, from the time that Stephen died in 
Judea till the day that Constantine reigned 
in the city of his founding. That which 
must have seemed a dream to the waking 
youth of Ephesus was a solid and bitter 
reality to the men and women whose de- 
votion and courage wrought the mighty 
change. So while we traverse in thought 
that period and a little more, which covers 
the long sleep of the young men of the 
legend, let us feel as we ought the tre- 
mendous personal forces, as well as the 
mighty principles which turned foes to 
friends and glorified the cross of Calvary 



1 8 Christian types of fymtem. 

into the heavenly symbol of Constantine's 
vision. 

The first encounter of Christianity was 
with the bigotry and intolerance of Juda- 
ism. It was a conflict with home associ- 
ates and associations. It was a verification 
of the prophecy of Jesus himself, who said, 
" I am come to set a man at variance 
against his father," " And a man's foes 
shall be they of his own household." But 
no opposition calls for sterner stuff in him 
who means to withstand it than that which 
comes from one's friends and neighbors, 
the heretic's family, his intimates, his pa- 
trons, or his clients. Bigotry is never more 
brutal and hostility never more hateful 
than when they are turned against those 
who have been companions and co-workers. 
The Christian could not evade the sweep 
of a general law, and so he suffered as 
his Master had done before him. The 
same spirit which had pursued Jesus to His 
death followed His disciples. Christianity 
was received from the very outset with a 
storm of bitter opposition ; and although 
there was almost always a little party 
among the Jews who perceived the light 
and heard the word gladly, the great 



Z\)t spart^s* 19 

mass of Jesus' countrymen resisted the 
progress of the gospel with all the in- 
tensity of which a Jew is capable. 

The first overt act was the attack made 
on Stephen. It is a thrilling picture which 
shows us this brave young man telling 
his friends and neighbors their mistake, 
setting their sins in order before them, 
braving all their wrath, and at last strug- 
gling to his knees under the pelting shower 
of stones, with a prayer on his lips which 
was an echo of that on Calvary, " Lord, lay 
not this sin to their charge," and falling 
asleep with the glory of heaven on his 
countenance. Thus died the first Christian 
martyr, and thus to this day we behold 
him, — 

" All radiant with celestial grace 

Martyr all o'er and fit to trace 

The lines of Jesus' death." 

The next to die was James the son 
of Zebedee, who perished by the sword. 
James the younger, called the Lord's 
brother, was thrown from the Temple and 
beaten to death with a tanner's club. 
Peter is said to have died in the amphithe- 
atre and Paul to have been beheaded in 
the Appian Way. Of the other apostles 



20 Christian typts of fyttoimx. 

we know nothing certainly. Legends there 
are to be sure, but nothing more. The 
Christian was everywhere a man to be 
hated and opposed, but as yet the sect 
had not gained prominence enough to be 
persecuted. There is such a thing as a 
contempt which does not think it worth 
while to persecute, and apart from the 
malice and hate with which a Jew neces- 
sarily treated these heretics from the faith 
of Abraham, there was as yet no wide- 
spread movement against the followers of 
the Lord. In that great, busy, self-ab- 
sorbed empire, Christianity was not for 
some years of enough importance to be 
persecuted. 

But that could be true only for a little 
while. The Christians were aggressive. 
They were full of a missionary spirit. 
They journeyed far and wide, always fear- 
less in speech, bold in belief, tenacious of 
their purpose to tell to others the great 
tidings they themselves had heard. The 
spirit of that age in the Church was in- 
carnate in the person of Paul on his end- 
less wayfaring to and fro in the world, 
speaking the word of truth. With such 
persistent preaching the Word and its fol- 



lowers spread. The word " Christian " 
began to be a " by-word " in strange and 
distant cities. All that the historian Tac- 
itus knew of them was that they were " a 
set of men detested for their enormities, 
whom the common people called Chris- 
tians. " By the year 64 A. D. they had made 
their way to Rome, and were then promi- 
nent enough in the throngs who crowded 
thither to attract the malevolent notice 
of Nero himself. In July of that year 
there was a terrible conflagration in Rome. 
For six days and seven nights it swept 
through the city, unchecked and ruinous, 
till of the fourteen districts or wards only 
four remained untouched. Three were 
completely in ashes, palaces, temples, mar- 
ket-places, basilicas, houses, — all were de- 
stroyed. There was terrible misery in 
Rome. There was more than a suspicion 
that Nero himself had furthered or con- 
nived at the destruction. He was ac- 
cused of wanting to burn Rome that he 
might rebuild it in more splendid style. 
He was believed to have had the awful 
craving for just such a sensation as a city 
in flames could give him. There was a 
deep-seated and deadly suspicion of him 



22 Christian typts of heroism* 

in the public mind, and the wily emperor 
must divert it ; and so he singled out the 
Christians. He caused them to be called 
the incendiaries. There was no reason 
given for the horrible charge, no crime 
was brought to their doors, no trial ever 
was allowed them. But with a senseless 
fury, all the ingenious cruelty of that dia- 
bolical mind was let loose against the 
Christians. Whoever confessed to being 
of their number was apprehended and 
condemned. And when the awful scene 
of their torment and their death is re- 
called, it silences all cavil against the cour- 
age which persisted in the faith in the face 
of such horrible deterrents. 

For on a dreadful summer night in the 
gardens of Nero, which once occupied the 
ground where now St. Peter's rises, there 
were throngs of the Roman people ; and 
in and out among them moved Nero, in 
the dress of a charioteer. They had come 
thither to see an illumination. Along the 
paths of the garden were huge torches, 
held aloft on high posts, and flaring and 
flaming with seething pitch. If the crowd 
surged up about each one of these with a 
strange curiosity, it was no wonder. For 



£tje Martyrs* 23 

they were living torches, each one a Chris- 
tian, each one a martyr in his gown of 
fire ! Moreover not a stone's throw away, 
almost in the light of these ghastly bea- 
cons, men and women of this name and 
calling, sewn up in the skins of beasts, 
were being thrown to famished dogs. So 
awful was this early test put upon the 
courage and the endurance of the Christian 
character. 

This was but the beginning of evils. 
Domitian, because he heard that the Chris- 
tians were organizing a kingdom, planned 
a persecution, though it was not carried 
out. Trajan enacted a law that while Chris- 
tians must not be sought out, yet when ac- 
cused and convicted they must be put to 
death. There were outbreaks of severity 
and hate under Marcus Aurelius, becoming 
more severe under Decius and under Dio- 
cletian, who held a bitter determination to 
crush this kingdom within a kingdom. For 
three hundred years, with every excess and 
refinement of savagery of which the hard 
and ingenious mind of cruel emperors was 
capable, the Christians were pursued and 
wearied with persecution. It is impossible 
now to dwell upon the lurid picture of their 



24 C^rtfittan typt& of tytvotem. 

sufferings ; the torments they were called to 
go through; the strain put upon their en- 
durance and strength of conviction. By far 
the most dreadful thing about these tor- 
tures was that, as Dr. Uhlhorn says, they 
"did not aim at the death of the Christians, 
but only at compelling them by means of 
torture to recant." " Tortures overtook 
them," says Cyprian, " wherein the tor- 
turer ceases not, without escape of con- 
demnation, without the consolation of 
death." All the ordinary modes of inflict- 
ing pain were exhausted long before the 
malevolence of the persecutors was ap- 
peased. When the fire had burned its 
hottest, and the sword cut its sharpest, and 
wild beasts had raged their fiercest, and 
these steadfast men and women were un- 
dismayed, then they were stretched and 
broken upon the rack, and some had their 
limbs dislocated and their fingers crushed, 
and others had their flesh torn with sharp 
hooks, and others were smeared with honey 
and exposed to stinging insects. Women 
were insulted and abused in fashions too 
horrible to be told. It is an awful cata- 
logue, and there is no use whatever in 
rehearsing it. One single instance will 



Ztyt spatters* 25 

show as well as five hundred the spirit in 
which the Christians met this attack upon 
their faith through their persons and their 
lives. During the reign of Marcus Aure- 
lius, a maiden of Lyons named Blandina 
was apprehended as a Christian along with 
many others. She made no denial. Her 
one answer to every demand was simply, 
" I am a Christian, and there is no wrong 
done among us." She was tortured till 
the breath was almost gone from her body, 
and then she was revived that she might 
be thrown into prison. There she was 
forced to witness the torture and the death 
of many others, whom she comforted and 
helped with her strong, cheering words of 
faith. At last, when her tormentors de- 
spaired of making her recant, she was taken 
from her lingering torture-house for one 
more sharp distress, and wrapped and 
bound in a net, was tossed to death upon 
the horns of a wild bull. 

Always distinguished among honored 
martyrs of this age was Polycarp, the pupil 
of Saint John. He was arrested by the 
officers of the governor, and dragged away 
to the hall of justice. There the governor 
met him, and with a little compassion for 



26 Christian Zypts of heroism* 

the old saint, urged him to conform to 
what was asked of him, " only to cry 
1 Caesar' twice and sacrifice, and he would 
be safe." But to all the entreaties and com- 
mands Polycarp made reply, " Eighty and 
six years have I served Christ and He has 
never done me wrong ; how then can I 
blaspheme Him now, — my King and my 
Saviour." The officers threatened him 
with the wild beasts, but he was unmoved. 
They added the threat of fire. He answered, 
" Do with me what you will." The crowd 
clamored for his death. They demanded 
that he should be burned alive, and rushed 
for fagots and for wood that he might 
be made an instant victim. They would 
have nailed him to the stake, but he said, 
" Leave me as I am. He who gives me 
grace to bear the flame will help me to 
stand unshaken. " And so he died, with 
a prayer of praise on his lips, as stoutly 
and bravely as any soldier in battle. 

In like spirit, when Justin w r as brought 
to the trial which won him the surname of 
" The Martyr," he sealed a life of brave 
service with as valorous a death. " Sacri- 
fice to the gods," was the rough order of 
the Prefect. "I am a Christian and cannot 



sacrifice to idols," was the answer. Then 
he was led forth, praising God, to the place 
of execution, where he was first scourged 
and then beheaded with the axe. It is no 
wonder that the endurance of the Christians 
wearied their persecutors. There is no 
headway to be made against such courage 
and steadfastness. This was the very hero- 
ism which had stood up in the pass at Ther- 
mopylae, and marshalled itself in the plain 
of Marathon, and hurled back the Cartha- 
ginian from the gates of Rome, rallying 
once more in the hearts of an undegenerate 
posterity. 

There is a picture by Gabriel Max 
which will convey to any sensitive imagi- 
nation all the terror and the testing of 
those early persecutions. It is called " The 
Token." A young girl with a pure and 
beautiful face is standing in the arena, in 
the midst of furious beasts tearing one 
another in their wild struggles for their hu- 
man victims. Two of them are grappling 
at her feet, and beside her a tiger is 
just rushing from his cage, which in a 
moment will glut his hunger on her flesh. 
But she has no thought of them ; some 
one in the throng which waits to see her 



28 Christian Z^ti of tyttotem. 

" butchered to make a Roman holiday " — 
perhaps a friend, perhaps a lover — has 
dropped a flower over the parapet, and it 
lies at her feet, a token of at least one 
loving heart among all the throng of foes. 
And as she stoops to pick it up, she has 
raised her eyes as if to search for the face 
of her friend. There is no fear in them, no 
coward wavering in her countenance, but 
all is serene there with the steadfastness of 
perfect trust and purity. In a moment 
the beasts will be upon her. Their angry 
roar will be drowned in that fiercer one 
from the throats of twenty thousand men 
and women who love to see the Chris- 
tians die, and she will be added to those 
courageous souls of whom it is said, " The 
blood of the martyrs is the seed of the 
Church." 

Now I do not allege these experiences 
of the martyrs as proofs that they were 
doing unheard-of things or showing un- 
paralleled traits. It is not our proposition 
that the Christian hero is a new and singu- 
lar type in so far as his sacrifices and 
achievements are concerned. It may be 
conceded that other men had suffered tor- 
ment with heroism, that other women had 



t\)t $)art£rsu 29 

braved peril and death with fortitude. 
That is not to the point. We are aiming 
now to show that in these new martyrs 
we have as genuine heroes, displaying a 
strength as firm, a power as decisive, an 
aggressive force as vital, as had ever been 
exhibited ; and we merely point to these 
men and women, dying by hundreds and 
by thousands the violent deaths which 
had been counted always as the last tests 
of virile courage, the experiences which 
proved whether according to the old stand- 
ard men were manly, and declare that in 
this first display of the qualities which it 
tends to foster, Christianity produced a 
style of manhood which shows no weaken- 
ing in the old stock. We look at the men 
drawn up in the ranks of the Roman legion, 
we turn to the daring adventurers who are 
scouring the northern seas in their war- 
ships, we even drop a glance of admiration 
on the gladiator in his brawny strength, 
and we think it were a pity to lose this 
courage to face danger unflinchingly, this 
nerve which can endure physical pain 
without weakening. Very well. Here in 
custody of the soldier, here facing the 
gladiator, here on the coasts where the 



30 Cijrtetian t^pt& of heroism* 

Viking buccaneers are winning their fame, 
are men and women who under the im- 
pulse of a purely religious motive are bear- 
ing as much and daring as much. The 
Christian martyr is as vigorous and aggres- 
sive a man as any of his contemporaries. 

For remember how they are brought to 
these sufferings. They are not merely 
standing on the defensive. They have at- 
tacked the older faiths ; they have re- 
buked the heathen life by the purity of 
their own. We underrate these saints of 
the Church if we reckon them as either 
passive or pusillanimous. Their very 
meekness is a sign of the highest strength. 
It means not passivity, but power. A 
weak man cannot be a meek man. There 
is no meekness about one who endures 
wrong because he has not the vigor to 
protest against it. That is cowardice, pure 
and simple. But meekness is that strength 
which out of -strong passions brings a 
stronger self-control and by means of that 
force maintains the ascendency of the 
higher nature and the moral order over the 
lower. The beauty of meekness lies in 
the fact that it is the docility, the quies- 
cence of a soul submissive to no will but 



Gfyt Martyrs* 31 

the Divine, and emptied of the distracting 
and weakening elements of selfishness. 
But it is the humility of strength and not 
the servility of feebleness. 

Call the martyrs meek, then, if you will. 
It is the highest tribute you can pay them. 
But remember what force of character that 
term implies and how entirely consistent 
it is with the most active and aggressive 
traits. And contrasting the work and the 
warfare of these men and women with the 
heroism of the older types, you will seek 
vainly for any falling off in the quality of 
the trait. Who could be braver, stronger, 
hardier, than he whose every-day life puts 
him in daily danger of death ? What 
soldier called to the shock of arms ; what 
sailor plunging into the midnight gale; 
what hunter confronting the lion in his 
lair; what explorer among the ice floes or 
the jungles ; what Columbus braving the 
perils of an unknown ocean was ever 
called to the display of a finer courage, 
a more brilliant intrepidity, a more daunt- 
less endurance? These earliest heroes of 
the Church were soldiers fighting a daily 
battle. They were mariners caught in 
the storm of three hundred pitiless years. 



32 Christian £y$z& of fyttoism. 

They braved a power more deadly than arc- 
tic cold, more withering than tropic heats. 
With no weapon in hand they composedly 
faced the hungry beasts on the sands of 
the arena. Ay, more than that, like ex- 
plorers in the spiritual world, they put 
to sea upon uncharted tides, to seek in 
the kingdom of their Lord a continent 
unseen of mortal eyes ! 

But let us add to this word the one 
additional thought needful to do exact 
justice to the Christian martyrs. In their 
conduct they showed, indeed, no falling 
away from the most superb heroic qual- 
ities. In their motives they surpassed 
all earlier types as the saint surpasses 
the savage. The spirit and purpose in 
which they lived and died at once ele- 
vates them into a new class. Take two 
soldiers and let them be fighting with 
the same physical courage, — the one as 
a hired mercenary at the bidding of a 
despot, the other the freeman's battle for 
his country, — and which becomes the 
nobler figure; whose courage now is 
of the sort that wins most admiration? 
The character of the combatant shines 
out upon his conflict, and what he does 



£t)t $}art£t#* 33 

gains a glory or a shadow from what he 
is. The man who fights for a price sinks 
into insignificance by the side of the man 
who fights for an idea, a principle, an 
affection. The man who bears pain or 
braves danger from selfishness or any 
mean motive grows not greater but 
smaller from his suffering. But let the 
motive rise and let him become the ser- 
vant of something outside himself and 
higher than himself, and his bravery then 
is glorified into a real heroism. And 
to own the sway of a noble idea; to feel, 
as these men and women did, the mastery 
of divine truth ; to turn loyally whither 
it beckons, and follow even unto pangs 
and death, — that is always a more glorious 
because a more manly and womanly thing 
than to fight wild beasts or defy the bite 
of pain. 

There is a familiar picture by Gerome 
which illustrates with a peculiar force the 
spirit that was in the souls of the martyrs, 
its transcendent superiority to the brute 
courage of barbarous men, and above all 
its conquering power over human hearts. 
It represents a gladiator standing in the 
arena over his prostrate antagonist, and 
3 



34 Christian typtst of fyttoism. 

waiting the signal which is to give the 
poor wretch his life or condemn him 
to a bloody death. At first glance it 
seems only a repulsive picture of a brutal 
deed, devoid of moral interest save as 
a study of a barbarous sport. But if you 
look again you will feel a thrill of admira- 
tion, not unlikely moistening into tears. 
For the outstretched fingers of the pros- 
trate youth are not reaching up for pity 
nor in any gesture of despair. He is 
making the sign of the cross. He is a 
Christian. He is dying for principle. He 
will not recant his faith even there on the 
bloody sands, with the savage Roman mob 
yelling his death-sentence in his ears and 
with the whirling blade of his adversary 
swooping toward his heart. Who is the 
braver man, — the hired mercenary or the 
devoted youth? Whose courage most im- 
presses, sways, moves the heart of the 
world? For your answer look at the crum- 
bling Coliseum at one end of Rome, type 
of the coarser aggressive traits ; and at the 
other the cross that crowns St. Peter's with 
the emblem of the finer courage that dies 
for truth, the heroism that spends itself 
for love ! 



If the work is to be judged by its 
results and the character by what it 
effects, then must the heroism of the 
martyrs be counted of the highest sort. 
For it was decisive in its success. In this 
first struggle of the Church with its foes 
it closed with the brute force of the 
Empire. Whatever physical powers could 
do against the Christians was done with- 
out stint. And it all failed. It was 
force against love, and " love never 
faileth." 

Cross against corselet, 
Love against hatred, 
Peace-cry for war-cry. 
Patience is powerful ; 
He that o'ercometh 
Hath power o'er the nations. 



II. 

THE APOLOGISTS. 



I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, 
I have kept the faith. — 2 Tim. iv. 7. 

Then to side with truth is noble, 

When we share her wretched crust 
Ere her cause bring fame and profit 

And 't is prosperous to be just ; 
Then it is the brave man chooses, 

While the coward stands aside, 
Doubting in his abject spirit, 

Till his Lord is crucified, 
And the multitude make virtue 

Of the faith they had denied. 

This is the victory that overcometh the world, even 
our faith. — 1 John v. 4. 

There is a strength of quiet endurance as signifi- 
cant of courage as the most daring feats of prowess. 

— TUCKERMAN. 



II. 

THE APOLOGISTS. 

1VTO age is appreciated if it be seen 
only from one point of view; for 
every standpoint brings out one set of 
characteristics at the expense of others. 
The story of the martyrs, for instance, 
brings vividly to mind the physical hero- 
ism of the early Christians. It reveals 
the splendid intrepidity with which these 
first disciples in the new school of ethics 
and religion faced the same old adver- 
saries, — pain, peril, and death, — which 
have been the tests of heroism from the 
beginning of time. But the simple story 
of their sufferings does not do justice 
either to their sacrifices or to the full 
strength of their heroic temper. 

For there is a heroism in creed as well 
as in deed. There is a heroism in think- 
ing as well as in acting, — in which, indeed, 
thought is action and is the form which 



40 Christian &ypt8 of fytvotem. 

personal force assumes. And the growth 
of the soul of man develops a kind of cour- 
age and of heroic strength not to be found 
in the earlier and lower types of men. For 
as time goes on and man unfolds his inner 
nature, it soon appears that the same cour- 
age and endurance which will sustain him 
in physical perils fails him in trials of a 
higher and more searching sort. Says 
Dr. Chapin: "At the bottom of a good 
deal of the bravery that appears in the 
world there lurks a miserable cowardice. 
Men will face powder and steel because 
they cannot face public opinion. " The 
same man who will brave the tempest or 
move at the head of the charging col- 
umn dares not hold an opinion at variance 
with the creed of his neighborhood. A 
man may dare the high seas without a 
shadow of fear, who never will venture off 
the safe soundings of popularity or tra- 
dition in thought. There were men who 
gave their lives for this country when they 
felt the united sentiment of their loyal 
countrymen behind them, who neverthe- 
less did not dare to side with Garrison and 
Phillips in that unpopular sentiment which 
isolated the great agitators. It was easy 



t\)t #pologtet& 41 

to bear privations and wounds in com- 
parison with the trial of standing by an 
unpopular opinion in a time of social per- 
secution. In truth, the man or woman 
who espouses a new truth, subscribes to 
a creed which is reckoned heretical, or 
steps out into any position of difference 
with the opinions or the morals of his 
neighbors in life, is called upon to display a 
rare and high courage, a heroism harder to 
find and more difficult to sustain than that 
which goes with the multitude to battle. 

It is to the contemplation of such a 
type of courage that we turn when we 
review the opening centuries of the Chris- 
tian era, with our eyes this time upon the 
intellectual and the moral struggle that 
was fought to a victorious end under the 
lead of the apologists, the defenders of 
the faith. Let us realize that long before 
these men and women were led to the 
stake or thrust into the arena, they had 
displayed that kind of courage which leads 
the way to great reforms and makes pos- 
sible the world's moral renovation. For 
they had dared to separate themselves 
from the sympathy of their age; they had 
arrayed themselves in hostility to the 



42 Ctirtettan typt& of heroism* 

ruling faith and the common conduct of 
life; they had set at defiance custom, 
fashion, interest, law, and prejudice; they 
had arrayed themselves in radical opposi- 
tion to all the tangible forces of their age. 
" Christianity,'' says Professor Smythe, 
" from the beginning had to encounter 
active and skilful foes. Judaism and hea- 
thenism were no abstractions but armed 
warriors. The struggle was a vital one, — 
not a question of mere organization or 
subsidiary doctrine, but of the origin, es- 
sence, authority, and power of the gospel. 
The contest also was protracted. As it 
went on, all the forces that could be 
arrayed against the new religion had time 
to reach the field of conflict and mingle 
in the strife. The victorious Roman, the 
acute and versatile Greek, the Oriental 
theosophist, the Jewish legatist, the power 
of the Empire, the learning of Alexandria, 
vested interests, wit, ridicule, sarcasm, rev- 
erence for the past, the pride of human 
reason, the cunning of covetousness, the 
accumulated resources of human wisdom 
and human depravity, — all were marshalled 
and taxed." That is a tremendous array and 
indicates the storm of hostility and resis- 



£t)t #pologtet0* 43 

tance every Christian was sure to encoun- 
ter when he took his stand with the pure 
band of the apostles and martyrs. Mere- 
ly to be a Christian was an act of heroism. 
But in order to have a just appreciation 
of the task which lay before the defenders 
of the faith, we must bear in mind the 
familiar facts which describe the condition 
of the Roman Empire in intellectual and 
moral life, when the first strange voices 
were lifted up to herald the name of Jesus 
the Christ to the world. The tranquillity 
of the Empire under Caesar Augustus was 
a fallacious calm. The realm of the Caes- 
ars was a splendid shell, whose outward 
glories were more than matched by its 
inward corruptions. The government was 
a relentless absolutism. The whole world 
was at the mercy of one man's will. The 
people had yielded all their liberties be- 
cause they were too indolent and too selfish 
to maintain them ; and with the conces- 
sion of their political prerogatives men had 
signed away their moral and their intellec- 
tual liberties. As power was concentrated 
immorality increased. The emperors set 
a frightful example of crime and of vice. 
Their courtiers were apt pupils, and the 



44 Christian <£ypt& of fymi&m. 

contagion spread to the people. Tiberius, 
Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, and Otho 
vied with one another in a succession of 
evil lives. As Dr. Draper, one of the calm- 
est critics, says: "The social fabric was 
a mass of rottenness. The people had 
become a populace; the aristocracy was 
demoniac; the city was a hell. No crime 
that the annals of human wickedness can 
show was left unperpetrated." The breach 
between classes became wider than ever 
before in history. The rich were very 
rich ; the poor were in most abject 
misery. Labor had passed into the hands 
of a vast army of slaves, and so was 
counted a degradation to a citizen ; and 
great populations in every city demanded 
to be fed at the public expense. Justice 
was bought and sold like a commodity. 
Every man's life was at the mercy of in- 
formers and spies. No property was safe 
from the rapacity of those in power. " Free- 
men," says Tacitus, " betrayed their pat- 
rons, and he who had lived without an 
enemy died by the treachery of a friend. " 
Poisoning was reduced to a system. Crimes 
against purity grew more and more ne- 
farious. Marriage was avoided. Illicit 



t\)t Apologists* 45 

passion fed itself with the most enormous 
excesses. Modest)' became a lost virtue. 
"Women/' it was said, " marry that they 
may be divorced, and are divorced that 
they may marry." The most distinguished 
names of the period are stained with un- 
natural crimes which to-day may not even 
be named. The awful practice of infanti- 
cide increased, and it was reckoned a folly 
and a frailty to be encumbered with a fam- 
ily of children. Slavery, too, cursed the 
Empire like a plague-spot. Gibbon esti- 
mates the number of slaves at sixty millions. 
Every conquered province yielded its 
quota to swell the totals. Whenever a 
man became a slave, his lot was cast in 
with the brutes. The utter degradation of 
manhood may be read in the one fact that 
slave labor was cheaper than animal labor, 
and much of the work we perform with 
cattle w r as done by men. The slave lived 
like a brute, was treated like a brute, and 
died like a brute. He became the pander 
to his master's lust or the victim of his 
cruelty. That excellent old man Cato 
Hogged his servants before his guests, and 
when they were worn out with age in his 
service sold them like so many old clothes, 



46 Christian typts of Jljeroferm 

for what he could get. In Cicero's time, 
some rich patrician had a slave crucified 
for killing a wild boar at the wrong mo- 
ment during a hunt, and all the comment 
Cicero had to make on such wanton 
atrocity was the remark, " This may pos- 
sibly seem harsh." 

But the cruelty, wantonness, excess, and 
sensuality of the Empire rose to its awful 
climax in the gladiatorial shows. It is 
hard, almost impossible, for a modern 
mind to conceive the atrocity of this fea- 
ture of life under the Empire. That men 
and women, in what is reckoned an ad- 
vanced period of civilization, should have 
made the killing of beasts and men their 
habitual amusement is almost beyond 
belief. But there seemed to be no limit 
to the excesses which were permitted in 
this constant accompaniment of life in the 
great cities. The deadly combats between 
pairs of men, or between a gladiator and 
a beast, because more attractive than any 
other sport. The cruel diversion which 
made all other pleasures insipid soon grew 
tame itself, and the craving for more dread- 
ful sensations had to be gratified, with every 
extravagance of violence, bloodshed, and 



£\)t Apologists;* 47 

torture. Whole herds of beasts were turned 
loose in the arena to tear and maim and kill 
one another. Pompey let loose six hundred 
lions in one day. The games of Trajan 
lasted one hundred and twenty days, and ten 
thousand gladiators fought, and ten thou- 
sand beasts were slain. Under Domitian an 
army of feeble dwarfs was compelled to 
fight, and more than once female gladiators 
fought and perished in these ghastly shows. 

It must be remembered that these were 
not the sports of the abandoned and the 
dissolute ; they were the recreation of the 
multitude. If you had been in Rome on a 
pleasant summer day you might have gone 
in with some eighty thousand spectators to 
the Coliseum, and there found yourself in 
the presence of every class and condition 
of Roman society from the Emperor and 
the vestal virgins down to the lowest beg- 
gars and criminals; so that Mr. Lecky 
calls the great amphitheatre itself " at once 
the most imposing and the most charac- 
teristic relic of pagan Rome." 

When the morals of a people have sunk 
to such a point, it is easy to see how ill 
it must fare with philosophy and with re- 
ligion. The time was one of undisguised 



48 Christian <£ypt8 of heroism* 

scepticism and the deepest intellectual de- 
pression. Philosophy was but a feeble and 
wavering guide through these dark times. 
It led the thoughtful classes to an intel- 
lectual atheism, which was matched by the 
" atheism of indifference " among the com- 
mon people. Religion was wasted to a 
degraded superstition. There was a god 
for every event and every work of life ; 
and the worship of these divinities, whose 
attributes were so often no more than 
personified passions and lusts, was little 
more than a system of bribery for get- 
ting their favors. Many a time this so- 
called worship became an orgy of crime 
and sensuality. Men had small respect 
for the gods, who frequently were but ex- 
emplars in sin. " If I could catch Aphro- 
dite," said a friend of Socrates, " I would 
pierce her with a javelin, she has cor- 
rupted so many of our modest and excel- 
lent women." In one of Terence's plays 
a man justifies the worst of crimes against 
the family by saying, " If a god does 
it, why may not I?" And yet because 
men feared these deities and sought to 
avert their ill-will, they were scrupulous 
to the last degree in the performance of 



£t)t 0pologt0t0* 49 

the ceremonies which were supposed to 
please the gods, and uncontrollable in their 
rage against any who offered no gifts or 
supplications. I know no better words 
than those of Dr. Draper, whose temper 
would not permit him to do any injustice 
to paganism, to sum up the conditions 
which marked the age when the star shone 
over Bethlehem. "Faith was dead; mo- 
rality had disappeared. Around the shores 
of the Mediterranean the conquered na- 
tions looked at one another, — partakers 
of a common misfortune, associates in a 
common lot. Not one of them had found 
a god to help her in her day of need. 
Europe, Asia, and Africa were tranquil, 
but it was the silence of despair." 1 

I grant that in this very condition there 
was a profound reason for hopefulness and 
for faith to any soul with a knowledge of 
the characteristics of the human heart and 
the utter impossibility of detaining it long 
in the degradation of moral corruption 
and spiritual want. But it needed a strong 
and courageous mind to believe in the 
moral resiliency of human nature, and a 

1 Intellectual Development of Europe, p. 267. 
4 



50 Christian typt$ of J?erotem* 

brave faith in the new religion to see in 
that the destined means of regeneration. 
And to any heart which felt the awful 
demoralization of those days and realized 
how radical and uncompromising must be 
the process of the spiritual renovation of 
this evil condition, the task must have 
seemed heavy enough to daunt the most 
fervent and sanguine. Could anything 
but the most heroic determination and the 
most unswerving faith have given impulse 
enough to lead men forth into the decla- 
ration of principles and of an allegiance 
which practically cut them off from all 
men? The Roman world was indeed tol- 
erant of many gods, and the worship of a 
new one would not in itself arouse hostility 
against his devotees. But when the new 
god claimed all the devotion of his fol- 
lower's heart, and pronounced the worship 
of all other divinities idolatry and super- 
stition, and required a purity of life and a 
strictness of conduct which was a standing 
rebuke to the daily walk and conversation 
of all the world, there is little wonder that 
prejudice flamed into a fierce opposition 
and demanded the suppression of this new 
cult. A Christian man was a social out- 



£tie #pologtet& 51 

cast. His citizenship in the kingdom of 
heaven made him an exile in the Empire ; 
and in that very attitude into which he 
was forced, he found the sharpest test of 
his heroic qualities. 

For the heroism of the innovator in 
thought and in faith was an every-day 
requisition of the defender of the faith. 
Every act of his made him conspicuous 
among his fellowmen, thrusting him into 
that trying prominence so hard for sensi- 
tive men to assume. A Christian could 
not perform the simplest acts nor sustain 
the simplest relations of life without be- 
coming a marked man. His very scruples 
accused him. What he abstained from do- 
ing was as conspicuous as what he did. 
Every step was a confession of faith, and 
every confession brought a new peril. 
Many a Christian could only have become 
such by abandoning the business which 
was his support in life; for if he were 
a servant or laborer in a pagan temple, if 
he were a maker or seller of idols, if he 
were an actor, a soldier, a gladiator, he 
could be baptized only on the condition 
that he give up his occupation. His fel- 
lowship depended on his abstaining from 



52 Christian typts of fyztoism. 

whatever supported the heathen system 
or drew a revenue from its corrupted 
life ; and when the spirit of heathenism 
was everywhere, every hour and every 
scene exposed the daring alien in faith. 
He could not go upon the street without 
passing the images and symbols of the 
gods, to w 7 hich custom required him to do 
homage. If he entered a court of justice 
or the Senate, there was the altar with 
wine and incense where he was expected to 
offer a libation and strew incense. If he 
gave alms to a beggar, the mendicant 
might invoke on him the blessing of some 
god, and if he were not to protest he 
might seem to accept the blessing of an 
idol. If he had occasion to borrow money, 
the note he must sign would contain an 
oath by the heathen gods. If he were in- 
vited to a family gathering of his heathen 
relatives or friends, his absence would 
excite remark; and if he went he must 
incur their displeasure by declining any 
share in the sacrifices offered from begin- 
ning to end of the meal. The Christian 
wife or husband, son or daughter, was in 
the most painful plight; for the duties 
of religion would clash with all the family 



£tje #pologtet$u 53 

feelings and make the loyal heart a 
stranger in its own home. 

Now there is no doubt that in the hero- 
ism born of such conditions we have a 
higher type than that which merely makes 
men endure the pangs of bodily suffering. 
The latter is a form of human strength 
which we would never see go out of fash- 
ion and which the testimony of the martyrs 
shows never will go out of fashion under 
the reign of Christianity; but the latter 
calls for qualities of a finer order, and 
under the tutelage of Christianity has met 
with such a response as under no other 
system or form of human culture. This 
constant attrition of the true faith with 
the false put a strain upon men's souls 
that exceeded the power of the weak or 
the morally degenerate. Napoleon used to 
say that he w r as fond of " two-o'clock-in- 
the-morning-courage," or that type which is 
never surprised, never unprepared for ac- 
tion, never startled into cowardice. But the 
courage of the men and women who met 
the forces of heathendom and fought with 
them the conquering war of the Cross, was 
a better sort than that. For theirs was a 
morning, noon, and night courage, capable 



54 Christian &ypt& of heroism* 

of taking the longest strain, of endurance, 
of unflagging earnestness, of tireless pa- 
tience. It was as good by day as by night, 
and its forces knew no dusk or midnight. 
It was equal to the test of sustaining ills 
which it clearly foresaw, and meeting 
deliberately the forces from which it ex- 
pected and asked no conditions and no 
quarter. 

The first labor set for these noble hearts 
was the defence of the faith. The Chris- 
tian must defend himself and his religion 
against the merciless reasoning, ridicule, 
denunciation, and slander which were 
turned against him and his religion. It 
was said that Christians led immoral lives, 
and they must disprove the charge or 
courageously live down the slander. The 
heathen heard the Christians speak of par- 
taking of the body and blood of Christ; 
and straightway the word went about that 
these fellows murdered and devoured an 
infant at their feasts. They heard of the 
love-feasts of these religionists ; and know- 
ing no love but lust, they declared that 
these secret religious meetings were orgies 
of licentiousness. Because the Christians 
had no temples and could not brook the 



Z\)t #poiogtet$u 55 

sight of altars and statues, it was declared 
that they had no gods, were atheists, were 
responsible for the disasters sent by the 
jealous and angry deities. Because their 
aims were little understood, were mysteri- 
ous and strange to the people, they were 
charged with forming a secret society, and 
called disloyal to the Emperor and un- 
profitable to the State. 

To these charges the apologists re- 
sponded by pointing to the martyrs. " Is 
it possible/' they asked, " that men would 
die as you see they do who live as you 
say they do. A life of self-indulgence is 
not a preparation for a martyr's death." 
And they appealed to the lives as well as 
the deaths of the Christians in refutation 
of this evil slander. It was notorious that 
many a profligate, many a wanton, many 
a dishonest person upon embracing this 
faith had become utterly reformed in 
character. The heathen were taught the 
real truths of the Christians' faith and 
its spirituality enforced upon them with 
every imaginable argument. They who 
charged the Christians with disloyalty were 
challenged to show where they had ever 
been involved in conspiracy, or failed to 



56 Christian typt& of fyttoiim. 

serve and honor the Emperor as loyal 
subjects should, save only in the with- 
holding of those divine honors which they 
conceived to be impious and contrary to 
their convictions. Thus they stood stur- 
dily and steadily holding fast by the faith 
delivered to the saints, — the champions of 
its truths, the defenders of its good name, 
the loyal expounders of its novel doctrines. 
But they did more than defend. They 
turned on Paganism. They pushed be- 
yond defence into attack. True, they were 
only contending for toleration for them- 
selves. But theirs was a mission of con- 
version ; and truth to their convictions, 
fidelity to the gospel they had espoused, 
compelled them to go farther and reason 
with the writers and philosophers of the 
pagan world upon the absurdity of its 
beliefs and the pernicious influence of its 
practices. But here the difficulty was 
two-fold. It was not hard to expose the 
folly and absurdity of the popular myth- 
ology. The truth of the heathen religion 
could not be defended. It was absolutely 
untenable. The philosophers themselves 
had concluded that it would not bear ex- 
amination and that no sane man could 



believe the tales of the gods. At the 
same time everybody deprecated the at- 
tempt to reform or to overthrow the pop- 
ular faith. It had no moral influence on 
the people. It had ceased to control 
thought; but' it was a mighty political 
engine, not to be meddled with, because 
it was built into the fabric of the State 
and an integral part of its life. He who 
touched it must meet all the opposition of 
vested interests as well as of a superstition 
as cruel as it was ignorant. And so on 
the part of the populace, the priesthood, 
and the princes of the State there was the 
keenest opposition to every word which 
could be construed as impiety toward the 
gods. It might be true that the popular 
faith was a delusion; but it was a popular 
one, it was a good thing for the powerful 
classes, and woe betide him who tampered 
with it. That was the opposition which 
met the Christian when he would appeal 
to the people to forsake the worship of 
their wicked and impotent deities. " Let 
be," was the word. " Rome has prospered 
well under the care of the gods. Beware 
of any sacrilege." And when popular 
prejudice is aroused, the man who places 



58 Christian £y$t& of heroism* 

himself in its way must be something more 
than a coward. 

The case was no better with the phi- 
losophers and their disciples. This was 
the other difficulty of the Christians. The 
scepticism of the age required a heart of 
oak to overcome it. It was destructive, 
agnostic, hopeless, pitiless, loveless. Phil- 
osophy was confused and helpless. It 
could offer no help and it would receive 
none. It simply gave itself up to inert- 
ness and to despair. To face such a 
mood requires a heart with more than a 
passive fidelity. It takes all the vigorous, 
aggressive belief of which men are capable 
to go into the field of intellect and there 
contend against the paralyzing, killing 
force of a great negation. There is some- 
thing appalling in an audacious doubt. A 
great infidelity is a very giant in arms. 
Many a noble mind has been prostrated 
before the might of its baleful spirit. Nor 
are there any men in all the roll of history 
who merit a higher place of honor and 
renown than those who armed with a few 
simple ideas, so simple and so plain that 
they look like David's sling and pebbles 
in contrast with the arms and stature of 



t\)t &polo%im. 59 

Goliath, attack the imposing power of false 
philosophy intrenched in the despair and 
scepticism of a decaying civilization. To 
the thoughtful man the spectacle, some- 
time covering many years, is as thrilling 
as a great battle. And when at last the 
truth prevails and the old error goes 
routed into the shadows, discredited and 
friendless, something of praise above what 
is given to the acuteness which planned 
and the dialectic skill which effected the 
defeat is due to the brave faith which 
nerved the hearts of those who first dared 
utter a protest against the wizard lie that 
held an age under its spell. 



III. 

THE HERMITS AND THE MONKS. 



Oh, that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of 
wayfaring men that I might leave my people and 
go from them ! for they be all adulterers, an assembly 
of treacherous men. — Jer. ix. 2. 

The old order changeth, giving place to new, 

And God fulfils himself in many ways, 

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 

Tennyson. 

During about three centuries and while Europe had 
sunk into the most extreme moral, intellectual, and po- 
litical degradation, a constant stream of missionaries 
poured forth from the monasteries, who spread the 
knowledge of the Cross and the seeds of a future 
civilization through every land from Lombardy to 
Sweden. — Lecky. 

It cost Europe a thousand years of barbarism to 
escape the fate of China. — Macaulay. 



III. 

THE HERMITS AND THE MONKS. 

T17HEN Rome had become converted 
to Christianity, she had not been 
renovated morally. The work of the mar- 
tyrs and of the apologists had left men 
changed in belief but not in life. The 
degeneracy of the Empire was too com- 
plete to be overcome in a century. It 
took hundreds of years for the leaven 
of the Christian ethics to permeate the 
social life and institutions of the world. 
Christianity indeed won a speedy victory 
over the world's faith. In a marvellously 
short time the Church had become the 
teacher of society. But the scholar was 
slow and inapt, very ignorant, and very 
undisciplined, and the process of re- 
newing the moral life of the Empire was 
slow and halting. 

In the years to which we now ad- 
vance, Rome was declining toward her 



64 Christian typt* of heroism* 

fall. That catastrophe was now impend- 
ing which Gibbon calls the greatest and 
perhaps the most awful in the history 
of mankind. The slow causes which had 
been at their weakening work for hundreds 
of years were now developing to their cul- 
mination. Every element of Roman life 
was contributing to the general ruin. 
The corruption of morals had sapped the 
manhood and womanhood of the age of 
all its courage and endurance. The pat- 
riotic spirit which built the Empire had 
long since died by the hand of selfishness 
and despotism. The disorders of tyranny 
had thrown down the last barriers which 
protected the State, and at length the 
barbarians, pouring down from the north, 
completed the work of wrecking great 
Rome. The ruins which to-day stand 
stark and bare about the Forum show how 
great that catastrophe was. The great 
basilica, just across the Tiber, indicates 
the power which, during those centuries of 
wreck, pillage, and bloodshed, preserved 
the elements of social life from complete 
annihilation. While if you would seek in 
those same streets of modern Rome 
the representative of the institution which 



t\)t permits anD tyt spottfe^ 65 

for centuries embodied the best life 
and the most vigorous energies of the 
Church, you would find it in the monk 
with his cowl and crucifix, who wends his 
way on errands of piety or mercy. Just 
as the martyrs and the defenders of the 
faith embodied in themselves the work 
of the first three centuries, the hermits 
and the monks represent the vital ener- 
gies of the new organization, which was 
destined to thrive and to wax strong while 
every other institution of the social life 
of man was suffering in disease or lan- 
guishing unto death. 

For in the early years of the fourth 
century there began a new era in the 
Church ; and as every new epoch in his- 
tory is associated with the name and the 
personality of some man, so the era of 
the hermits and the monks is forever as- 
sociated with the fame of Saint Anthony 
the hermit. The story of his life is the 
introduction to the great movement which 
he led, — the beginning of monasticism, 
the organization of a force to meet the 
deteriorations of society. He was a well- 
born and serious Egyptian youth, or- 
phaned at an early age, and living with 
5 



66 Christian tyyti of heroism* 

his sister; but being impressed by the 
words of Christ, " Go and sell all thou 
hast, and give to the poor," he parted 
with his property, save enough to main- 
tain his sister, and bestowed it upon the 
poor, while he himself withdrew to the 
outskirts of a little village, where he dwelt, 
working, praying, and studying the Scrip- 
tures. It was his aim to emulate the best 
there was in every man he met, and al- 
ways to strive against the spirit of world - 
liness, of impurity, of false ambition. He 
had a fierce struggle with self, and when 
he deemed that he had overcome in him- 
self the spirit of evil, he nevertheless 
continued to practise the most rigid aus- 
terities, lest he might be overcome in some 
unguarded moment and fall arain to his 
old estate. For twenty years he dwelt 
apart, coming forth from his cell only 
at long intervals, and always practising 
upon himself all the devices of self-denial, 
of mortification of the body, of fasting, 
and of prayer. " He who sits in the 
desert," he was accustomed to say, " is 
safe from three enemies, — from hearing, 
from sight, and from speech. He has 
only to fight what he finds in his own 



Z\)t permits anD tlje Sl^onfe^ 67 

heart." " He who would be free from 
sin," said Anthony, " must be so by weep- 
ing and by mourning, and he who would 
be built up in virtue must be built up by 
tears." His life passed beyond the limits 
of a century. " At last," one says of him, 
" he perceived that it was time for him to 
set sail, for he was a hundred and five 
years old ; " and so one day he said, " I 
perceive that I am called by the Lord," 
and lay down to his last sleep. 

But his life did not end with this sleep 
of his body. From far and near disciples 
had been gathering, who accepted his 
principles and would imitate his life. His 
cell became the goal of many a pilgrim- 
age, his discourse a new gospel to many 
a burdened and world-weary soul. A 
great host soon followed the lead of Saint 
Anthony. The deserts and solitary places 
became the haunts of multitudes who, like 
the pious Alexandrian, cultivated retire- 
ment, fastings, and mortification of the 
flesh as the means of salvation. Vast 
populations sprung up, who abode in 
tombs, in caves, in wells, in every lonely 
and deserted spot, and these hermits were 
seized with one intense and sincere pas- 



68 Christian typts of fyttoitim. 

sion. They lived apart that they might 
pray and study and meditate, watch their 
own hearts and instruct the souls of others, 
renouncing self and bringing themselves 
under the most fearful torments and self- 
inflicted disciplines. Their first principles 
in the life they had chosen were celibacy 
and poverty, charity and self-mortification. 
They became the objects of admiration 
and of reverence. They were sought out 
by the best and most virtuous men and 
women, who found inspiration in their 
lives and wisdom in their words. Won- 
derful stories got abroad of the courage 
they displayed, of the abstinence they prac- 
tised, of the miracles they wrought. They 
were accounted the wisest and the best of 
men. Those who had neither the courage 
nor the virtue to follow their example, who 
could neither approve the world nor retreat 
from it, nevertheless looked in reverence 
and in gratitude on the men who could 
maintain their own purity where all around 
was so vile, and renounce the thought of 
a personal gain where all others were grasp- 
ing and selfish. Such eminent and excellent 
Christians as Athanasius, Basil, Chrysos- 
tom, Gregory, Jerome, and Augustine 



t\)t permits ana t^e S^onfe** 69 

deemed the hermits a noble race and 
approved their character and their works. 
The opinion was all but universal which 
has since been stated by Montalambert, 
the great historian of this class, that " theirs 
was the most noble effort that has been 
made to overcome corrupted nature and 
to approach Christian perfection." 

But the bare narration of this fact does 
not at all suggest its real significance. It 
is a wonderful phenomenon indeed under 
any interpretation. It is no ordinary spec- 
tacle which displays to us these hundreds 
of thousands of men and women forsaking 
their homes, disposing of their possessions, 
living without comforts, and inflicting 
upon themselves the harshest self-mor- 
tifications ; and one seeks to know the 
real causes leading up to so general and 
so earnest a movement. As in the case 
of most of the great movements of so- 
ciety, this one was the outcome of various 
forces. 

1. In the first place, a movement of 
asceticism had long been raging, in the 
words of Mr. Lecky, " like a mental epi- 
demic," throughout the world. Among 
the Jews, the Essenes, placing themselves 



70 Christian Zypts of fyttoism* 

in absolute hostility to the national ap- 
proval and encouragement of marriage, 
constituted a monastic society wholly sepa- 
rate from the world. In practical, matter- 
of-fact Rome the same tendency prevailed, 
and the sect of the Cynics recommended 
a complete renunciation of the social and 
domestic ties. Egyptian philosophy fos- 
tered the same general sentiments, and 
even many of the Christian sects encour- 
aged the practice of penances and the 
habits of asceticism. It was a mental 
fashion of the time. 

2. But like every other mental mood, 
this one had a relation to the philosophy 
which was then dominant. Every practice 
grows out of some principle. The things 
men do spring naturally from the 
thoughts they think; and behind the 
asceticism of the age, which made so 
many hermits, was a belief in the essen- 
tial evil of matter. The doctrine was 
widely held that matter was inherently 
bad ; that out of man's material nature 
came all the ills which befall his spirit; 
and that the only salvation for the soul 
was through the ceaseless abuse and con- 
tempt of the body. There is something 



marvellous in a mania which took pos- 
session of men's minds and made them 
abuse and defile God's handiwork in their 
own bodies. Nevertheless it was a con- 
viction which led up to the practice, and 
wild and exaggerated as it was, it was 
sincerely and devoutly held and practised. 
Saint Jerome tells admiringly of a saint who 
for thirty years had lived on a small por- 
tion of barley bread and a little water, and 
of another who lived in a hole, and whose 
daily portion of food was only five figs ; 
and this same holy father had a third 
hero, who seemed admirable in his eyes 
because he cut his hair only on Easter 
Sunday ; who never washed his clothes, nor 
changed his tunic till it dropped in pieces ; 
and whose merits, as shown by these aus- 
terities, Homer himself would be unable 
to recount. It was related of Saint Macar- 
ius that for six months he slept in a marsh 
and exposed his body to the stings of ven- 
omous flies. Cleanliness was so far from 
being regarded as next to godliness that 
it was treated as a deadly error, and he 
who washed his body was regarded as 
polluting his soul. Saint Abraham the 
hermit, who lived for fifty years after his 



72 Christian &ypt& of heroism* 

conversion, rigidly refused from the date 
of that experience ever to wash his face, 
and his biographer rather ambiguously re- 
marks that " his face reflected the purity 
of his soul ! " In later years, when this 
dreadful superstition had somewhat spent 
its force, a pious abbot, dwelling mourn- 
fully on the past, exclaimed in evident 
reproach of his own times, " Our fathers 
never washed their faces, but we frequent 
the public baths ! " 

The poet Tennyson has caught and ex- 
pressed the spirit of that age in the lines 
which describe the life and the self-tor- 
ment of Saint Simeon Stylites. The story 
of his excesses in penance is too revolting 
for refined ears; but he chiefly gloried in 
the peculiar practice which gave him his 
title. He built successively three pillars, 
the last one being sixty feet high, on 
which for thirty years he remained ex- 
posed to every change of climate, cease- 
lessly bending his body in prayer almost 
to the level of his feet. For a year, it is 
said, he stood upon one foot, his body 
vile with sores and with filth, his mind on 
the verge of insanity ; and this poor starv- 
ing, shrivelled maniac was only an extreme 



tl)t permits ana t\)t Routes* 73 

example of the ideal which all men were 
disposed to regard as the highest, the 
most worthy of their endeavor. The words 
which Tennyson puts into his mouth repre- 
sent the reigning superstition under whose 
impulse in part men sought the desert 
and the hermit's cell, — 

" Bear witness, if I could have found a way 
More slowly painful to subdue this home 
Of sin, my flesh which I despise and hate, 
I had not stinted practice, O my God." 

3. But in our search for the causes of 
the ascetic movement in the dark ages, 
we are not to forget another truth. If it 
be a fact that every practice of society 
grows out of some social conviction, so, 
too, it is true that every social tendency 
in thought is born of the practical needs 
which force themselves on human minds 
from without. There is a startling correl- 
ation between the moral life of man and 
the philosophical doctrines to which it 
leads or drives him. Thus when the heart 
of the w r orld has been long burdened with 
the teachings of materialism, it throws off 
the weight in some rebound toward a doc- 
trine which exalts the soul and asserts its 



74 Christian £ypt& of fyttotem. 

supremacy. Or when society has been 
long sinking under the excesses of sensu- 
ality and debauchery, it is natural that it 
should recoil to a hatred of the body and 
a stern mortification of its passions and 
propensities. The asceticism of the dark 
ages was a natural result of the corruptions 
of the later empire. It was the reaction 
from the wild debauch of sensuality and 
crime in which the degenerate society of 
Rome had been indulging. " Men," says 
Guizot, " were unoccupied, perverted, and 
a prey to all kinds of miseries. That is the 
reason we find so many turning monks. . . . 
When human nature could not fully and 
harmoniously display itself, when man 
could not pursue the true aim of his des- 
tiny, it was then that his development 
became eccentric, and that, rather than 
escape ruin, he cast himself at all risks into 
the strangest situations ; . . . the weariness, 
the disgust at an enervated perversity, the 
desire to fly from the public miseries is 
what made the monks of the east." The 
attempt to live in purity among men be- 
came too great a strain. It was necessary 
to invoke the aid of solitude, of isolation, 
in order to begin the moral cure and reno- 



t\)t permits anD t^e ^onfeg* n 

vation of themselves and of the world. 
The flight of the hermits from society was 
simply their effort to establish a sort of 
moral and spiritual quarantine, to sepa- 
rate themselves from the contagion of 
the world's terrible sinfulness, and check 
by isolation the spread of the awful rav- 
ages of sinfulness and corruption. The 
remedy was harsh, but the disease was 
malignant. 

Just here is the heroic side of asceti- 
cism, the phase of an otherwise eccen- 
tric, morbid, and unnatural movement, 
which commands our admiration. It sig- 
nified a stern and unflinching hatred of 
sin. It was the expression of men's long- 
ing for perfection. These enthusiasts went 
to the length of self-torture to express 
their desire for deliverance out of the 
temptations and the contaminations of an 
evil world. You may call this ridiculous. 
From the safe vantage ground of a society 
which sustains and encourages the prac- 
tice of virtue, you may pronounce asceti- 
cism an absurd mistake, a dreadful error. 
But if you had lived in the day in which 
asceticism throve, you would probably 
have taken a different view of it. To a 



76 Cljrtettan Zy$z* of heroism* 

well man the diet of the sick room doubt- 
less must always seem weak and detest- 
able, but doubtless it is the best diet for 
a sick man. And so apparently the best 
way the dark ages afforded out of their 
miseries and depravities was the way the 
hermits took. It was the only road to a 
religious and spiritual life. It is to be 
hoped that such an age may never recur, 
but if ever it does we shall behold a sim- 
ilar reaction. If the world ever again falls 
into the degeneracy of the later empire, 
there will be a new reign of asceticism 
before it is reclaimed; and in that day 
we shall all see and admit the strength 
and the courage which led men even to 
such fanatical extremes. There is a moral 
heroism in the fulfilment of the principle 
of self-renunciation, of separation from the 
world, of the immolation of self; and the 
age to which such examples are set, 
the age which learns that human nature 
can live upon a plane far above its own 
greed and violence, and fraud and lust, in 
an atmosphere of self-sacrifice and peace 
and fraternity, will as inevitably revere 
the strength and the virtue of those who 
teach it to live above this flesh, as the 



£tje permits anD t\)t sponfes* 77 

men and women of the fourth century 
revered the names of the hermits, from 
Saint Anthony on. 

But the movement toward solitude and 
asceticism did not end in itself. Its prin- 
ciples were at the foundation of a broader 
and more systematic movement. Its prac- 
tice was the basis of a form of religious 
life which is perpetuated to the present 
day. The hermit was lineally and logi- 
cally the predecessor of the monk. The 
monastery is the fruit of the hermitage. 
The steps by which the evolution was 
made are simple enough. The followers 
of the holy men who first led the way into 
the deserts built their own huts side by 
side, and while they continued to live 
each in his own abode, joined in their re- 
ligious exercises and so began to establish 
a common life. It was at this time, ac- 
cording to Guizot, that they were first 
called monks. But by and by they took 
another step. Instead of remaining in 
separate huts they collected in one edifice, 
under one roof; and thus was reached 
the form of life and administration which 
ruled Europe for centuries ; and thus were 
formed the great houses of piety, of learn- 



78 Christian typtst of heroism* 

ing, and of missionary zeal, which pre- 
served literature through the dark ages, 
which nourished the religious life of a 
dreary and desperate time, and which fur- 
nished the master spirits who overcame 
the conquerors of Rome and tamed the 
wild spirits of the barbarians of the north. 
These new and strange communities multi- 
plied in number and in population. In 
the stately words of Gibbon : " The pro- 
lific colonies of monks multiplied with 
rapid increase on the sands of Libya, upon 
the rocks of Thebais, and in the cities of 
the Nile. To the south of Alexandria the 
mountain and adjacent desert of Nitria was 
peopled by five thousand anachorets, and 
the traveller may still investigate the ruins 
of fifty monasteries which were planted in 
that barren soil by the disciples of Anthony. 
In the upper Thebais the vacant island of 
Fabenne was occupied by Pachomius and 
fourteen hundred of his brethren. That 
holy abbot successively founded nine mon- 
asteries of men and one of women ; and the 
festival of Easter sometimes collected fifty 
thousand religious persons, who followed 
his angelic rule of conduct." 

Egypt was indeed the parent of the 



t\)t permits ano ttje sponfeg* 79 

monasteries ; but there was soon scarcely 
any Christian country in which a similar 
movement was not ardently propagated. 
It was encouraged by the most eminent 
men in the Church. It was espoused by 
some of her strongest and best spirits, and 
in a very short period the foundations 
were laid for the great monastic orders, — 
those institutions which entered so power- 
fully into the life of Europe for the next 
thousand years. 

The organization of the great orders of 
monasticism began with the founding of 
the Benedictines by Saint Benedict about 
the beginning of the sixth century. Bene- 
dict was an Italian of the duchy of Spoleto 
and educated at Rome. But wearying of 
the profligacy and the corruption he saw 
all about him and becoming inbued with 
the spirit of the monks, at the age of fif- 
teen he himself became a hermit. The 
fame of his great sanctity spread abroad 
and brought great crowds about him, who 
begged his prayers and sought his coun- 
sels, so that at last he was led to found 
twelve monasteries, in each of which he sta- 
tioned twelve monks. This was at Monte 
Cassino, and out of this community, to 



80 Christian <typt£ of heroism. 

which he gave rules and a system of dis- 
cipline, came the great order which for 
thirteen hundred years has endured and 
perpetuated his name. The rules of the 
Benedictines were severe and trying. It 
was no child's play to be a monk in the 
days when this great order flourished. It 
is founded on three great principles, — self- 
abnegation, obedience, and labor. It was 
well said of the two great leaders in the 
ascetic movement, " Anthony had shown 
the foundation of individual freedom in 
self-conquest; Saint Benedict showed the 
foundation of social freedom in self-sur- 
render." And so their very principles 
of life had a marked bearing upon the 
social and political problems men had to 
work out in those hard days, and helped 
toward a better order than that which 
was so rapidly crumbling away in ruin. 
These communities of men knit together 
by ties of brotherhood, peaceful in the 
midst of wars, quiet and harmonious in 
the midst of plotting and intrigue and 
feuds, chaste and frugal in ages which 
were dying with the diseases of excess and 
impurity, exercised a mighty and salutary 
influence over the centuries in which they 



Gty permits arm tije sponfes* 81 

throve and labored. Every student knows 
the service the monasteries rendered to 
the cause of letters. Hallam well says 
that religion alone made a bridge across 
the chaos and linked the two periods of 
ancient and modern civilization. But the 
very bulwark of religion through these 
years was the monasteries, appearing in 
every community and influencing every 
class. Within their walls was done the 
only study of these years, and there was 
preserved the purity of the Latin tongue, 
which was for these times the sole hope 
of literature. The monasteries were the 
repositories for books, too, and all our 
manuscripts have been preserved to us in 
this wise, and could scarcely have come 
down in any other way. 

To these benefits which the monastic 
orders were conferring on their times 
Saint Benedict added another when he 
introduced a radical change into the life 
of the recluse and made it an essential of 
the Benedictine rule that the monks should 
labor with their hands. Now for the first 
time monasticism became industrious. 
" Laziness," declared Benedict, " is the en- 
emy of the soul, and therefore the brethren 
6 



82 Christian Zypts of fyttoism. 

should at certain times occupy themselves 
in manual labor, at others in holy reading." 
And so he instituted the rule " Pray and 
Labor." As a result of this reform the 
Benedictines became the universal farmers 
of Europe. Wherever the convent ap- 
peared fields waved with corn and fruits 
ripened in autumn ; and whenever the 
missionary went out from one of these 
communities into the wild land of the bar- 
barians, he took his farmer's lore with him, 
and his converts became almost surely the 
profitable tillers of the soil. And we shall 
always owe it as a debt of gratitude to the 
monks, and especially to the Benedictines, 
that in an age when war was an almost 
universal pursuit, and all the excitements 
and demoralizations of a period of vio- 
lence and bloodshed made men restless 
under the yoke of drudging toil and 
scornful of the plough and the axe, these 
men's lives were a constant example of 
industry and a perpetual plea in behalf 
of the dignity of labor. 

But of course, as the Benedictines grew, 
they became powerful, proud, and then 
corrupt. That is the history of almost 
every human institution. 



ttyt permits ana tlje S^onfe& 83 

" This is the moral of all human tales 
'T is but the same rehearsal of the past, 
First Freedom and then Glory; when that fails, 
Wealth, Vice, Corruption." 

Other orders grew up to rebuke the 
laxness of the monks of Saint Benedict 
and to reform the abuses in monastic life 
which had grown up with the years. And 
so almost simultaneously about the thir- 
teenth century sprung up the two orders 
of mendicant or " begging friars." It was 
their aim by poverty to put away the 
temptations which seduced the older order 
from its high aims and to induce ener- 
getic labor. And these men became the 
street and field preachers of their times. 
They went about rousing the dormant re- 
ligious life of the people. They were the 
Methodists of the thirteenth century, and 
their austere and consecrated lives beyond 
a doubt revived the power of the monks, 
and prolonged the day of usefulness of 
monasticism. 

Now has not enough been shown of the 
character of the monks and of their sys- 
tem to call for a reversal of that popular 
prejudice which has nothing but contempt 
for the principles which moved them or 



84 Cfjrfettau typts of fyttoi&m. 

for the work they did? It is the fashion 
to despise monasticism and think of a her- 
mit or a monk as a man too weak or too 
cowardly to cope with the evils of his 
time, and who therefore, to save and shield 
himself, retreats to the safety of solitude, 
and turns his back upon a world he will 
not try to help. But such a thought does 
little justice to the motives or to the char- 
acter of the hermits and the monks. It 
might apply to one who should make such 
a retreat to-day. It does not apply to the 
men who fled the awful vices of the most 
corrupt and demoralized period in history 
to save themselves and what remnant o*" 
their fellows they were able. These men, 
and especially the monks, adopted their 
mode of life, not as a selfish device to 
spare themselves from effort or from pain, 
but as the best means of bringing to bear 
the forces of religion on an evil generation ; 
and they rallied about their order the 
truest, the bravest, the purest life, not only 
in the Church, but in all mediaeval society. 
They stood up stoutly for law and for 
order in a period of tumult and of war. 
They held fast to literature and learning, 
when others were drifting into the night of 



£t>e fyttmit& anD t\)t sponfc^ 85 

ignorance and illiteracy. They tilled the 
soil and drained the fens of Europe. They 
protected the poor and withstood the op- 
pressor. Truly he who reads the history 
of the great religious orders must close 
the book not with the feeling that he has 
been reading the record of fanaticism and 
of weakness, but with a large respect for 
the wisdom, the courage, and the personal 
force which devised a bulwark against the 
devastating flood of a corrupted social 
life, and held the ground on which in bet- 
ter days should be reared a finer social 
structure. 

For ten centuries the monastic frater- 
nities were the strength of the Church. 
They gathered within themselves the best 
life of Europe ; in an age of depravity they 
stood for purity; in a decaying civiliza- 
tion they nourished a life fresh and stal- 
wart. If you kindle at the hardy virtues 
of your ancestors of the North, Viking 
or Norseman, Saxon or Dane, remember 
this, — that side by side with the barba- 
rian you must rank this cowled figure 
who met him with a courage equal to his 
own, who tamed his excesses, who set a 
bound to his iconoclasms, and who con- 



86 Ctirtettan typttt of H?erotetm 

verted him to the religion of Christ. The 
monk and the Viking met in the North, 
and when they were done with each other, 
the rover of the seas was a retainer of the 
cross. 



IV. 

THE PRELATES AND THE KNIGHTS. 



Amend your lives, ye who would fain 
The order of the knights attain. 
Devoutly watch, devoutly pray, 
From pride and sin, oh, turn away ! 
Shun all that 's base, the Church defend ; 
Be the widow's and the orphan's friend ; 
Be good and leal ; take naught by might ; 
Be bold, and guard the people's right. 
This is the rule for gallant knight. 

EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS. 

The best school of moral discipline which the Mid- 
dle Ages afforded was the institution of chivalry. — 
Hallam. 

The papal hierarchy, in fact, instituted in the Middle 
Ages the main bond among the various European na- 
tions after the decline of the Roman sway ; and in this 
view the Catholic influence ought to be judged, as De 
Maistre truly remarked, not only by the ostensible good 
which it produced, but yet more by the imminent evil 
which it silently obviated. — Comte. 



IV. 

THE PRELATES AND THE KNIGHTS. 

TT chanced one day that Saint Thomas 
Aquinas was sitting in the Vatican 
with Pope Innocent the Fourth, when 
great sums of silver and gold were being 
carried into the Papal treasury. " You 
see," said the Pope, with great compla- 
cency, " the age of the Church is past 
when she could say with Saint Peter, * silver 
and gold have I none.' " "Yes," an- 
swered Thomas, " and the day also is 
past when she could say to the paralytic, 
1 Take up thy bed and walk/ " 

The incident illustrates the strength and 
the weakness of the days on which we now 
come, in the development of Christendom 
and the changing type of the Christian 
ideal. For with the advent of the dark 
ages the Christian character and faith 
were doubly tried. We have seen how 
Christian men sought to meet the evils 



90 Christian &ypt& of heroism* 

of the times, as these assailed their inward 
lives ; and how, strange and extreme as 
their remedy appears, it did not come out of 
weakness in character, but out of strength 
and the courage to take stringent meas- 
ures for the extirpation of the social 
vices. By self-mortification, by withdrawal 
from the world, by the organization of 
the religious orders for the rectification 
of society, the effort of the hermits and 
monks, badly as it may have found utter- 
ance according to modern standards, nev- 
ertheless expressed a form of struggle 
which is perpetual and which always 
trains tough and sinewy souls. The strug- 
gles of those early hermits, the tasks they 
undertook, and the work they accom- 
plished display character cast in the 
heroic mould and reflecting no uncertain 
lustre upon the Christian name. And now 
we turn to another phase in the life of 
these same centuries. We note the call 
made upon the resources of the Christian 
character, working itself out into life and 
action in a dark and tumultuous period. 
We shall see how bravely that call was 
met, how entirely adequate was the new 
type of moral life for the new emergency, 



<£\)t prelates anD t^e liintgtits* 91 

and how unabated was the vigor and the 
effectiveness of manhood under the tute- 
lage of the now dominant faith. 

We shall have, at the outset, to dis- 
charge from our minds a common, almost 
universal prejudice. It is the habit of men 
and women in these times to carry their 
antipathy against the Romish Church back 
to the years prior to the Reformation, and 
look at the early centuries, when the Pap- 
acy was rising to power, with all the acri- 
mony born of the great religious revolution 
of the sixteenth century. The result is an 
inevitable failure to value the work done 
in the dark ages and mediaeval times as 
it deserves. It was an imperfect age, and 
the Church and its adherents were as far 
below the standard of this age as ours 
will be to future comers on the earth. But 
it was not the unredeemed epoch that 
some men suppose; and the struggles 
of the time, far from being the selfish 
efforts of narrow bigots to serve their own 
personal ends, were the vigorous and wise 
battles of far-sighted statesmen to estab- 
lish salutary institutions in a world pretty 
much given over to chaos. The eccles- 
iasticism of the Church in those days was 



92 €\)ti&tim typts of heroism* 

a blessing and not a bane. It was a new 
form of personal force. It was another 
disguise of the protean and eternal energy 
which it is one of the functions of the gos- 
pel to foster and to unfold. 

The historian of modern civilization 
makes this assertion concerning the Chris- 
tian Church in its relations to the break-up 
of the Empire and the downfall of its 
institutions and states: " Had not the 
Church then existed, the whole world 
must have been a victim to brute force." 
To understand fully what this means, we 
must remember in what remnants the 
wreck of the Roman Empire left society. 
From the fifth to the ninth century Euro- 
pean states were thoroughly disorganized. 
States, kingdoms, empires, were made and 
unmade with a frequency which caused the 
nation to seem the least stable of institu- 
tions. The boundary lines between states 
wavered like the shifting sea-sands. There 
were no central authorities for men to rally 
upon, no permanence to institutions, no 
solid ground for the expectation of security 
or of tranquillity. The people of Europe 
were like the survivors of a shipwreck, 
struggling in the waters in which their 



tty prelates anD ttje iimigtjts* 93 

ship has foundered. Every man was try- 
ing to secure a piece of the wreckage big 
enough to save himself. Of course in 
such a struggle every man's hand was 
against his brother. The strongest arm 
was the ruling arm, and superior physical 
power was really the basis of the great 
re-organization of society which took place 
under the system of Feudalism. The 
castles whose grim ruins frown from the 
heights of Europe are the relics of the 
order which replaced the great central 
power of Rome and broke into ten thou- 
sand petty sceptres the fasces of im- 
perial rule. Under its sway the feudal 
baron was the representative of kingship 
in his domain. He defended and gov- 
erned his tenants, while they fought his 
battles and did his work. That, in a nut- 
shell, was feudalism, — the half-way house 
of civilization, midway between the disin- 
tegration of the old Roman period and 
the unity of modern times. It resolved 
society into a multitude of petty states ; 
or rather, it gathered up the fragments of 
society into these little kingdoms. But 
it officered these with dukes, earls, and 
counts; and these, by their mutual jeal- 



94 Christian Zypts of heroism* 

ousies and clashing interests, kept up a per- 
petual warfare. It fostered the caste spirit, 
and so bred the evils of a serfdom which was 
very near to slavery. Feudalism was bet- 
ter than the disorders it replaced. Yet the 
continual wars with which the rival nobles 
harassed one another were but little less 
exhausting than the wars of the emperors ; 
and even if the people were not formally 
reduced to slavery, they were treated with 
the same insolence and rigor as if they 
had been remanded to that degradation. 
Feudalism grew to be an estate bad alike 
for master and for man ; it made the ruler 
hard, cruel, wanton, and warlike ; it made 
the serf sullen, degraded, vindictive. " My 
man is mine, to boil or roast him if I will," 
was an old proverb, and it fully expresses 
the scorn and the brutal pride of power 
which the lord felt toward his serf. On 
the other hand, the groan of an oppressed 
and over-burdened class may be heard 
in the sayings which echoed for genera- 
tions and centuries through Europe. " The 
lords would tax our light, and air, and 
rain. ,, " Good people," cried John Ball, 
" by what right are they we call lords 
greater than we? Why do they hold us in 



£tje prelates anD tfje Hnigl)t& 95 

serfage? It is of us and of our toil that 
these men hold the soil." 

M When Adam delved and Eve span, 
Where was then the gentleman ? " 

This much it is needful to say of the 
social and political conditions under the 
feudal system in order to describe the new 
ideal of courage and of positive manhood 
which was developed within the lines of 
Christendom. This was the society in 
which the Church was growing to a great 
and unprecedented power. It was the 
society in which was formed a new type 
of strength and of courage. 

For we are not to think of the priestly or- 
ders, the prelates and the monks of the 
Church, as quietly housing themselves in 
abbey and monastery and isolating them- 
selves altogether from the life of men out- 
side. The great religious orders by their 
very strength and extent, were forced to 
become active participants in the social 
changes and tendencies of the age, and 
they were at this time the salt which 
savored, if it did not even save, society. 
The Church through its monastic institu- 
tions was the great conservative power in 



96 Christian Zypt& of fyttoi&m. 

the world. In an age marked by the conflict 
of laws and authorities and the perpetual 
strife of powers, it enforced the supreme 
authority of the Divine Law as embodied 
in the visible powers of Holy Church. It 
strove to increase its influence among men. 
It saw its opportunity for asserting even an 
absolute authority, and claimed no less a 
prerogative over all human states. It in- 
sisted that its own rule was sovereign over 
subjects, lords, princes, kings, and em- 
perors. It summoned the sanctities of 
religion to enforce its claims. It interfered 
with governments and put its own man- 
dates above all other decrees. If any man 
or any government refused to do its bid- 
ding it claimed the right to destroy the 
rebel from the face of the earth. That in 
brief was the policy the Church elaborated 
for five centuries, till, in the time of Hilde- 
brand, the Church really ruled the world. 

Nor was this altogether the worst thing 
that could have happened, albeit, in a 
later age it became the root of abuses 
and of political evils. Guizot's saying cer- 
tainly seems a just summary of the work 
of the Church in this period, when he de- 
clares that it was all that kept the world 



Gfyt prelates anD rtie ftntgtjtg* 97 

from utter wreck by brute force. Its 
power increased. It sought that increase, 
but even its strenuous effort to reach 
absolute power was the inevitable ten- 
dency of the only strong institution in a 
society full of weak devices for the main- 
tenance of peace and order. The Church 
grew so strong because its strength was 
needed ; and its career was encouraged 
and fostered by the belief in its high aims 
and endeavors. Men had faith in the 
Church, and that faith was based on a 
knowledge of what the Church was do- 
ing for the world. 

It was in the development of this strength 
of rule that the Church formed in its ad- 
herents a new type of heroism. It is a 
mistake to think of Christianity as em- 
bodying itself in any fixed, formal, and 
inflexible type. It does not from age to 
age tend always to the same ends nor 
seek always the same ideals. We have 
seen how, in various epochs, the type of 
character which was produced under its 
influence was modified by the character- 
istics of surrounding society. This has 
been one secret of the power of Chris- 
tianity, — that it is versatile and adapts 
7 



98 Christian typts of tyttoism. 

itself to the conditions of each age in 
which it is at work. So now we come to a 
new phase of the courage, the intrepidity, 
the perseverance, and the strength of Chris- 
tianity, in considering its attitude toward 
the social world for the thousand years 
which marked the growth of the papacy. 
Consider the attitude of the Church 
toward the manifestations of force. Its 
inflexible aim during this period of unrest 
and social ferment was to secure mercy, 
justice, pity, and care for all men. It 
recognized no difference between the soul 
of the strong and the soul of the weak ; 
and so, wherever a cruel lord abused his 
serf, the monk, who was everywhere, felt 
it his duty as the Church's representative 
to interfere, protest against the act, and 
prevent it if he could. And he entered 
his protest and used his influence against 
the more general cruelties of war. Gibbon 
notes the interposition of Gregory the 
Great to check the abuse of popular 
elections, and reminds us how this great 
ecclesiastic made the poor his special care, 
dealing out his treasure to supply their 
want and exercising his power to restrain 
their oppressors. The clergy possessed 



£tje prelates ana t^e ftnigtjts* 99 

the right of interceding for criminals or 
oppressed persons; the churches became 
the asylums for fugitives, into which the 
secular authorities could not go. The 
priests and monks undertook the cen- 
sorship of morals over those who were 
amenable to no other authority. Whole 
fraternities were formed under the inspira- 
tion of the Church to reconcile foes to one 
another, and one of the conditions of en- 
tering a Christian brotherhood of builders, 
in the Middle Ages, was that the candidate 
must confess and be at peace with his 
enemy. Peace associations were formed 
and funds raised as a sort of insurance 
against damage by violence of war; laws 
were passed forbidding men to travel with 
arms, or to do violence to peasants, serfs, 
or clerks. In all these lines of work and 
influence, the Church was centuries in ad- 
vance of the civil authorities, and set the 
example of what had to be done, and what 
was done finally, over all Europe. 

But we must not suppose that this task 
which the Church set for itself was one 
which cost nothing and called for no cour- 
age and strength. For the priest to face 
the petty lord, for the bishop or the arch- 



ioo €\)tistim typts of fyttoi&m. 

bishop to confront dukes, princes, kings, 
maintaining his principle and insisting on 
his humane claims, often required the same 
courage that men need on the field of battle 
or to bear martyrdom. Secular authority- 
was arrogant, irritable, and violent, and 
the habit of monk or priest was no shield 
against hatred or hostility. And so the 
inheritance of courage which had borne 
Christianity forward through all obstacles 
down to this age was passed on, changed 
only in the mode of its exercise, to this 
new generation. 

Perhaps the most striking triumph of 
the Church in these ages was the estab- 
lishment of what was called the Peace of 
God. The clergy, being unable in that 
warlike time to secure all the year for 
peaceful pursuits, induced the wild barons 
to admit certain days, places, and pursuits 
as inviolable and sacred to peace. The 
holy days, the feasts and other Christian 
festivals, such as Christmas, Easter, and 
the time in each week covering the days 
of the Passion, were set apart as days in 
which wars should not be waged nor the 
people disturbed in their peaceful pursuits. 
By this law the peasants were guarded, 



Zfyt prelates ana ti>e ftmgf)t$* 101 

and the cart, grain, and cattle of the farmer 
made as sacred as the utensils of the 
Church itself; and all this was enforced by 
the threat of excommunication, the most 
dreadfuL ban of the Church. Thus the 
Church stood for gentleness and peace. 
Her power was reared as a barrier against 
the rude and turbulent seas of human pas- 
sion, which beat upon all institutions in 
those stormy times. All along our east- 
ern coast are harbors, great and small, 
land-locked, protected by island, headland, 
or cape, into whose smooth waters the 
craft that skirt our coast on their busy 
errands of commerce may run if beset by 
storms and find smooth waters, good an- 
chorage, care, and safety. The arm of land 
stretches between them and the sea they 
have escaped, — a rampart of protection. 
So the institutions of the Church, her laws 
and her prerogatives, were stretched for 
ages between the weaker classes and the 
turbulence of an unsettled time of oppres- 
sions, and whoever sought refuge behind 
her power was protected and saved. 

One more fact will illustrate the vigor 
of the Church's life and the courage and 
steadfastness of her monks and clergy. 



102 Christian typts of H?erotetm 

This was her stern and unswerving cultiva- 
tion of the spirit of equality. The Church 
set her face steadfastly against the spirit 
of caste, which was the life of Feudalism, 
and this attitude was heroically main- 
tained. In her ranks all human distinc- 
tions were levelled ; she made men brethren 
indeed. Her services were equally at the 
call of all men ; her offices were open to all 
comers. A pope chosen from among the 
nobility might be succeeded by a cobblers 
son. The Church was as thorough a demo- 
cracy in this respect as our own land, 
whose highest office is open to the aspirant 
from the lowest station. Prince and peasant 
were absolutely on a level. Louis, the son 
of Charlemagne, set the example for sov- 
ereigns in all coming times, when he thrice 
prostrated himself before Pope Stephen IV. 
It was a later custom for the prince to 
hold the bridle-rein of a pope when the 
pontiff mounted his horse. " This theory of 
equality on a level absolutely independent 
of family or rank was vividly presented to 
the eye when a weak old man, small of 
stature and lean with long fasting, claim- 
ing to own not a farthing of worldly 
wealth, forbidden the use of any violence, 



Gfyt prelates anD ttje Viniqfytg. 103 

saw at his feet the proudest of feudal lords, 
— when Hildebrand saw Henry of Germany 
doing him reverence at Canossa." 

The mention of this name calls to mind 
the triumph of the prelates in their strug- 
gles with the social forces with which they 
had engaged. The attitude of the leaders 
of Christendom, their power over social 
tendencies, the influence they had not hes- 
itated to exert in the face of all violence 
and hostility of a warlike age, had fostered 
their power, and human-like, they craved 
more, and it became the dream of one 
man to establish not alone the entire inde- 
pendence of the Church but its authority 
over the temporal sovereigns. That man 
was Hildebrand, the son of an Italian car- 
penter, educated in a monastery at Rome, 
and afterward a monk at Cluny in France. 
By chance the newly chosen Pope, Leo 
IX., stopped at Cluny on his way to take 
his seat, — a providence, not a chance, — 
and meeting this thin, fiery, fanatical man, 
full of theories and plans and devices, was 
so impressed with him that he begged him 
to go in his retinue to Rome. Hildebrand 
went on condition that the Pope would 
journey as a pilgrim. He became his 



104 Christian ££pe$ of fyttoism. 

advisor, " Lord of our Lord the Pope/' and 
during Leo's reign and that of four succes- 
sors, kept his hand on the helm, until he 
himself was chosen pope as Gregory VII. 
His twelve years' reign left an impress on 
the Church's policy which eight hundred 
years have not worn off. 

Two things Hildebrand aimed to do and 
did. First, he concentrated and established 
the power of the clergy. He showed all 
the courage of a Luther in reform, though 
with a less rational theory. He aimed to 
purge the Church of abuses and purify its 
life, and to do this involved in his view 
two great undertakings ; first, to forbid 
the marriage of the clergy; secondly, to 
abolish the purchase and sale of livings 
and places in the Church. In both of 
these attempts Hildebrand encountered 
the vigorous opposition of his subordi- 
nates, but showed inflexible determination 
and an energy which persisted to success. 
Secondly, he asserted and established the 
absolute supremacy of the Church over 
the State. The prelates had hitherto held 
offices owning a double allegiance, one 
to the Pope, and one to the king or 
emperor. The same man was thus both 



£tje prelates ana ttje limtgl)t$* 105 

an ecclesiastical and a civil magistrate. 
But Gregory insisted that every bishop, 
no matter of what land, must receive the 
crosier, ring, and staff from him and not 
from the sovereign ; no priest must accept 
these emblems at the hands of a layman. 
That was the blow which struck at the 
State and which would put half the 
property of Europe into the control of 
the Pope. No wonder that this move 
raised a turmoil through the whole Chris- 
tian world. Hildebrand did not live to 
see his purpose carried into full effect; he 
died in exile, a victim of Henry IV., whom 
he had humiliated. But his work went on, 
and in the reign of Alexander III., at 
Venice, Frederick Barbarossa prostrated 
himself before the Pope in token of sub- 
mission. Three porphyry slabs in St. 
Mark's Portico mark the place where this 
triumph was consummated ; and a cen- 
tury later, at a great Christmas jubilee, 
Pope Boniface III. summoned all Christen- 
dom to attend, and as he marched to the 
High Altar two swords were borne before 
him, as a symbol of the power, both tem- 
poral and spiritual, which it was the priv- 
ilege of that one hand to wield. 



io6 Christian £ppes of heroism* 

It is doubtful if we appreciate the true 
proportions of the courage and energy 
displayed in this struggle between the 
Church and the State. For one reason, 
because Ave do not sympathize with the end 
for which it was put forth ; for another 
because the courage of the diplomat or 
the statesman, being quieter in its exercise 
and less obtrusive, does not compare well 
in the popular esteem with the bravery 
which wins battles or endures the rack 
or the stake. But unquestionably Chris- 
tendom owes great thanks to the steadfast 
perseverance of the prelates and their un- 
flinching faithfulness to their ideals. They 
were true to their own best light ; they were 
equal to the emergencies of their age ; they 
were the equals of the rough fighters whom 
they restrained and conquered. All honor 
to priest and monk, who, in a day when 
these names meant more than they do in 
the nineteenth century, moved by the old 
spirit of Justin, Anthony, and Saint Fran- 
cis, once more confronted the new evils of 
a new age, to conquer and control them ! 

It would be an omission of one of the 
most important effects in the improve- 
ment of manners and of morals if we 



ti)t prelates anD tt)e iiimgtjtsu 107 

failed to dwell upon the influence and 
the achievements of the various orders of 
knighthood, and the spirit of chivalry, 
which through the Middle Ages materially 
helped the Church in its struggle against 
the world, and illustrated afresh the power 
of Christian heroism. It is not difficult to 
explain the origin of the spirit of chivalry. 
It was the outgrowth of the Crusades. The 
rise of the Mohammedans and their posses- 
sion of the Holy City and sepulchre filled 
Christian hearts with grief. The preach- 
ing of Peter the hermit summoned a great 
horde of princes, knights, armies, and fol- 
lowers, who for two hundred years, in suc- 
cessive expeditions sought to win back 
into Christian hands the spots so dear to 
Christian hearts. We may say it was a sen- 
timental strife, the outgrowth of pure pas- 
sion turned by crafty priests into a means 
of advancing the power of the Church; 
but we must remember at least that it 
was undertaken with devoutness of pur- 
pose, and prosecuted with a heroism 
worthy of a better cause, and with a pa- 
tience sometimes as sweet as martyrdom 
itself. 

The Crusades and the struggle for papal 



108 Christian ££pes of Jjerotetm 

supremacy were two battles for ideals 
which we must count wrong and demor- 
alizing, but incidentally they held in check 
and modified the harsh and turbulent ele- 
ments of feudal life; they tempered Chris- 
tendom with a new and kindlier spirit ; they 
illustrated afresh the manly vigor of Chris- 
tian hearts ; they added their quota to the 
great army who exemplified that Christian 
heroism, which, however it may vary in 
type, is the same in spirit through all ages. 

For out of the Crusades came the institu- 
tion of chivalry, the prophecy of the day 
when strength shall wed with grace and 
power with love, the unfulfilled promise of 
the time when self-sacrifice shall take the 
place of this world's self-seeking, and men 
strive in the rivalry of a generous service 
to their kind. The character of a true 
knight, at once pious and valorous, strong 
in arm and tender in heart, is a creation of 
Christianity; nor has Christianity on the 
whole produced any finer type. 

It needs no argument to prove that 
chivalry was a clear type of the courage 
and manly virtue which may exist under 
Christian training. The ideal was created 
by the union of the martial spirit with the 



£fje prelates ana tt)t Jimtgtjtg* 109 

Christian virtues. It demanded justice, 
courtesy, and respect for woman. In these 
great requirements, however narrowly they 
were held and however poorly realized, 
Christian men laid the foundations for a 
broader and better type of manliness than 
had ever been witnessed before on earth. 
And in these conditions that it set up as 
the characteristics of an ideal were dis- 
closed a triple courage and strength. For 
in this ideal Christian men encountered the 
three great evils of the times. When they 
insisted on justice, they aimed a blow at 
all the oppressions great and small which 
made life burdensome; and when they 
demanded courtesy they put a ban upon 
the all but universal cruelties, rudeness, 
violence which turned society into one 
great brawl; and in calling for reverence 
for woman they attacked that traditional 
tyranny of the physically stronger sex over 
the weaker, which only now begins to 
draw to an end. We are accustomed to 
dwell upon chivalry as the dawn of the 
spirit of refinement in the secular character 
which marks how far the Christian spirit 
has penetrated the every-day standards of 
humanity ; but we are never at liberty to 



no Christian typte of heroism* 

forget that it was a refinement whose basis 
was courage, a grace whose root was in 
manly strength, a consideration for the 
weak born of a high sense of the obliga- 
tions of power. 

We have the legacy of chivalry in " the 
grand old name of gentleman " and the 
ideal it suggests. Dissociate that term 
from all the foolish traditions with which 
society has hung it about; use it in the 
simple ethical sense in which it means 
most to most men and women; drop all 
the fopperies and artificialities and follies 
which unworthy minds have tacked upon 
it to make it fit small men, mean men, 
contemptible men, and you will have in 
what is left a noble embodiment of the 
highest type of manhood which Christian 
principles have grafted upon the sturdy 
stock of the natural man. With true per- 
ception of the large inheritance that word 
derives from the side of manly strength, 
Juliana Berners says, in the quaint phrase 
of the " Heraldic Blazonry," " Of the off- 
spring of the gentilman Jafeth came 
Habraham, Moyses, Aron and the pro- 
fettys; and also the Kyng of the right 
lyne of Mary, of whom that gentilman 



t\)t prelates ana t\)t limigtjts* in 

Jhesus was borne. " With equal insight 
into the gracious and refined qualities 
which make it the fit designation of our 
regenerate manhood, a later writer has de- 
clared, " A Christian is God Almighty's v 
gentleman." 

When the monitor " Tecumseh " on that 
August morning in Mobile Bay was run- 
ning the rebel forts, she was rent by a 
torpedo and went down with all on board. 
"It was then," says the historian, "that 
[her commander] Craven did one of those 
deeds that should always be linked with 
the doer's name, as Sidney's is with the 
cup of cold water. The pilot and he in- 
stinctively made for the narrow opening 
leading to the turret below. Craven drew 
back. 'After you, pilot,' he said. There 
was no afterward for him; the pilot was 
saved, but he went down with his ship." 
There was a lineal descendant of the elder 
knighthood and the true type of the hero 
for all time to come, the full fruit of a 
manly strength ripened in the sunshine of 
the Christian spirit. 



V. 

THE REFORMERS. 



Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a 
hill cannot be hid. — Matt. v. 14. 

The Church of Rome is seen under Leo X. in all its 
strength and glory. A monk speaks, — and in the half 
of Europe, this power and glory suddenly crumble into 
dust. — D'Aubigne. 

Life may be given in many ways, 

And loyalty to truth be sealed 
As bravely in the closet as the field, 

So bountiful is Fate ; 
But then to stand beside her, 

When craven churls deride her, 
To front a lie in arms and not to yield, 

This shows, methinks, God's plan 
And measure of a stalwart man, 

Limbed like the old heroic breeds. 

Lowell : Commemoration Ode. 

My poor monk, thou hast a march and a struggle to 
go through such as neither I nor many other captains 
have seen the like in our most bloody battles. — George 
von Freundsberg (to Luther). 



THE REFORMERS. 

PHE Christian Church has always fur- 
nished its own reformers. Whenever 
in its changeful history errors and abuses 
have crept into its life, and the very prin- 
ciples by which it lives and thrives have 
been denied in the practice of those who 
use its name and profess its creed, the 
power of Christ's spirit has raised up 
souls to correct the abuses and recall 
men to the fundamentals of the faith. 
The forward movements of the Church 
have always been led by men whom she 
herself has trained; and however wrong 
the majority may sometimes have gone, 
there has always been a healthy and vigor- 
ous minority, though sometimes indeed 
only a minority of one ready to halt in the 
path and stand there until the march of 
the Church has been turned back to the 
right way. And in these exploits of 



n6 Christian typti of fyttoi&m. 

reform, in these renewals of the moral 
rectitude of Christendom, have been dis- 
played some of the finest efforts of cour- 
age, strength, and manliness that this 
world has ever witnessed. 

It is to the career and work of some of 
these souls that we now turn. We take up 
the history of the men, who, born in the 
Church, trained in its institutions, and bred 
to its best spirit, revolted against its cor- 
ruptions, recovered its pure traditions, and 
brought it back to the honest purpose of 
its earliest days. And as the great move- 
ments which culminated in the Reforma- 
tion were scattered over many lands and 
prolonged for over two centuries, it will 
best serve our purpose of illustration if 
we touch upon the lives of several of the 
most eminent of these Christian heroes, 
who made the modern world as you and I 
know it not only a possibility but also a 
reality. John Wyclif, John Huss, Jerome 
Savonarola, and Martin Luther, — an En- 
glishman, a Bohemian, a Florentine, and 
a German. 

In naming the cause of the Reformation 
it is needless to rehearse the familiar story 
of the growth of corruption and the decay 



of spiritual prestige in the Church. It has 
been shown how pure and how earnest the 
Church really was all through the dark 
ages, and how firm a bulwark to the feeble 
and demoralized remnants of society strug- 
gling for life against the attacks of hostile 
and deadly forces. The Church in all 
these times stood for equality in the face 
of the caste spirit which grew up under 
feudalism. It stood for protection to the 
weak in an age when brute force wreaked 
its most savage will upon the feeble and 
defenceless; it upheld learning and ed- 
ucation amidst the densest ignorance 
and deadness of intellectual life; and it 
held unflinchingly to the supremacy of 
the spiritual in the midst of a society 
which was sunk in superstition and mind- 
ful only of the coarsest and most material 
forces and laws. If it usurped a power 
and a place not meet for it to hold, it was 
only as men in emergencies are called to 
do w r hat they are not fitted to do, what 
they shrink from doing, but what they 
alone can do and must do. And no 
prejudice against what the Church came 
to be in its days of corruption and self- 
stultification ought to blind us to the 



n8 Cljrfettan £y#t$ of heroism* 

essential excellence and necessity of the 
work it did when it became the conserva- 
tor and the guardian of society. " Never," 
says Froude, " in all their history . . . 
have men thrown out of themselves any- 
thing so grand, so beautiful, so useful, as 
this Catholic Church once was. ... At 
this time the Church ruled the State with 
the authority of conscience. " It was a 
brave and noble work which the Church 
was doing with the world in those days; 
and the men and women who were 
brought up in the influences of the Chris- 
tian faith were the strongest and the most 
conspicuous among all the leaders of their 
times. 

But the papacy was destined to a down- 
fall. It was cherishing in itself the seeds 
of its own dissolution. The old order 
served its purpose and did its work; and 
then it was time for it to give place to a 
new one. There were three great causes 
which overthrew the temporal power of 
the Church and brought on a complete 
revolution in society. 

The first was the rivalry of powers in 
Europe. During the same centuries which 
witnessed the increase of the Church's 



tfyt 1&tfovmm. 119 

power in Europe, three great nations had 
been forming out of the wreckage and the 
remnants of the Empire. England rose to 
a commanding position in the affairs of the 
continent ; France acquired glory and rank 
under the administration of Charlemagne ; 
and Germany had already grown to a 
strength which made her the formidable 
rival of the other two. And naturally, as 
these great powers became conscious of 
their own strength and jealous of external 
powers, they grew restive under the con- 
trol of this foreign ecclesiastical princi- 
pality. The German could ill brook the 
interference of an Italian or a Spaniard 
who from his throne at Rome dictated 
the emperor's policy. It went hard with 
Englishmen to see the Pope's collector at 
London send off from time to time thou- 
sands of guineas in good English gold 
to put into these foreign coffers. There 
could be but one end to these jealousies 
and suspicions. They all tended to the 
overthrow of the temporal authority of 
Rome. 

Another contributing cause was the re- 
vival of learning. The intellect of Europe 
was awakening. There was great stir in 



120 Christian £ppes of heroism* 

the world of discovery, of letters, and of 
the arts. The realm of men's knowledge 
was enlarging and the courage and in- 
dependence of their thoughts were in- 
creasing. Copernicus created the new 
astronomy. Columbus opened the way 
to the New World. Gutenberg invented 
the most important art ever given to 
the human race since it learned the use 
of fire. In England scholarship grew with 
the centuries and a literature developed 
from Chaucer to Shakspeare. In Italy 
the splendors of the Renaissance were 
heightened by the light of the glorious 
names of the great artists Leonardo and 
Titian, Raphael and Michael Angelo. It 
was a wonderful period in the world's his- 
tory, and out of it came the most radical 
steps in the reformation of old abuses and 
the abolition of old evils. 

These changes were hastened so far as 
the Church was concerned by the corrup- 
tion and the absolutism of the papacy. 
Too much power and too complete ab- 
sorption in worldly concerns had eaten 
out the earnestness of the Church. The 
old spirit of denial and self-mortification 
had given place to greed and pride, and 



Z\)t foefomtersu 121 

carnality and lust of power. The Church 
had come too close to the State and had 
been defiled. The mercenary spirit pre- 
vailed among priests and prelates alike, 
and the Church was everywhere permit- 
ting its officials to beg of all men and lay 
society under a perpetual money-tribute 
for the benefit of its treasury. The ad- 
ministration of religion became an organ- 
ized system of plunder. Preferment in 
the Church was openly bought and sold ; 
and so profound was the degradation of the 
Church's moral sense that she permitted 
the awful blasphemy to be taught that 
for a sum of money a full discharge might 
be purchased from the penalties of sin 
and the release of a soul secured from the 
flames of purgatory. The consequences 
of such a prostitution of religion may be 
imagined. And when the sentiment be- 
gan to be general that the policy of the 
Church was venal, debasing, the end was 
near. When Luther could voice a general 
feeling in his words, " Everything is per- 
mitted at Rome but to be an honest man," 
it was not far to rebellion against the 
power that fostered such abuses. 

These were the three great causes of 



122 Christian typtis of heroism* 

that religious revolution which took the half 
of Europe from the Pope's control, and 
whose continuing force has pushed that 
functionary from one stronghold to another, 
until at last he is shut up to a political jur- 
isdiction over the scanty grounds of the Vat- 
ican Palace. And if the men who began 
this work of moral regeneration within the 
Church had been permitted to foresee the 
results of their work, it would have been 
a mighty and cheering inspiration. But 
even then the task before them would 
have been one to appall any but the most 
stout-hearted. It called for the most un- 
flinching and steadfast qualities to begin 
and to carry on the tremendous struggle 
which now for two hundred years shook 
Europe and reached all hearts within its 
borders ; and the men who prepared the 
ground for Protestant Christianity were the 
worthy successors in all heroic qualities 
of the generations of Christian hearts 
which had preceded them. They dis- 
played all the old courage of the early 
martyrs, and the same sturdy faithfulness 
to the truth as faced the superstition and 
bigotry of the Empire and upheld the 
doctrines of the faith once committed 



Z\)t Keformers* 123 

to the saints. " Play the man, Master 
Ridley/' cried old Bishop Latimer, when 
Bloody Mary dragged them from their 
prison to die at the stake; " Play the man, 
and we shall this day light such a candle 
in England as shall never be put out ! " 
That was the stuff which was in these 
modern martyrs, these new defenders of 
the faith, these children of the brave old 
hermits, the priests and knights, with all 
the chivalry of the elder days still fresh 
in their souls. 

In the middle of the fourteenth century 
England was full of gloom and agitation. 
The Black Death, the most terrible plague 
that the world had ever witnessed, had 
swept down upon England, and one half 
the population of the kingdom became 
its victims; the industrial system begot 
misery, discontent, and revolt among the 
laboring class ; the costly campaigns of the 
king involved the nation in most exacting 
taxation ; and to crown all, the dissatisfac- 
tion of the people flamed up in a bitter 
hate of the friars, the prelates, and the 
papacy. It was in such an hour that there 
appeared in England a man who was des- 
tined to rank as the forerunner of the 



124 Christian typtis of fyttotim. 

Reformation, and anticipate by a century 
and a half the work of Martin Luther. 
John Wyclif, whose name is always to be 
associated with the English Bible, which 
he first of all Englishmen translated into 
the mother-tongue, was the man who al- 
most single-handed attacked the creed 
and the practice of the Church and asserted 
the freedom of religious thought against 
the papacy. He was a thin, spare man, 
quick and restless, with untiring energy and 
undaunted courage. He was an Oxford 
graduate and conspicuous for his learning. 
But he stood by the common people as 
their sympathizer and as their advocate ; 
and when a controversy arose between 
Edward III. and the Pope, Wyclif took 
the most positive stand against the ex- 
actions of Rome, and in resistance to the 
exorbitant demands of the Holy See. It 
was not long before Wyclif became a 
conspicuous figure in England in the 
struggle to be rid of papal supremacy. 
He grew strong with the controversies in 
which he engaged. His mind broadened ; 
his courage against the popes increased. 
He began to see what others were faintly 
perceiving, that the papal system was not 



t\)t Heformers* 125 

essential to the life of Christianity; that 
it was not necessarily the Church ; and that 
very possibly all that passed as orthodox 
and heaven-ordained might not be either. 
His search for the fundamentals of Chris- 
tianity led him back to the Bible, and he 
determined that it ought to be in the 
power of every man to read his Bible in 
the mother-tongue. That was the motive 
which impelled him to the great work of 
his life, the translation of the Bible into 
English, that it might be within the reach 
of every Englishman. " The sacred Scrip- 
tures " he held " to be the property of the 
people, and one which no party should 
be allowed to wrest from them." He 
soon accomplished his desire, and his 
translation of the Bible was the first ever 
made into English, being the basis of the 
Book Englishmen read to-day. This was 
the great and lasting influence of John 
Wyclif, a Protestant one hundred and fifty 
years before Luther and a Puritan three 
hundred years before Cromwell. And as 
one reads the story of his life-work, one 
feels that he had in him all the aggressive 
energy of his countrymen; all the courage 
and determination which had brought or- 



126 Christian Zy$t$ of heroism* 

der out of the chaos of kingdoms which 
made England; all the dogged sense of 
right and determination to have it which 
had gained Magna Charta ; all the instinct 
for freedom which restrained kings and 
forced concessions from nobles, till Eng- 
lish liberty blossomed into the great re- 
public of the west Yet this was a man 
whose Christian training was bestowed 
on a heart disposed to the ideals of the 
cross. And here, thirteen hundred years 
after Calvary, comes a hero to show us 
how unabated was the aggressive fighting 
spirit in the hearts of those who inherited 
the Christian name. Nothing is lost from 
the old force, — we only see it glorified 
with a nobler motive and trained up to a 
larger strength. 

But Wyclif s influence did not die with 
him. He was too great a man to be shut 
up to the limits of England. His following 
there was large, and his principles swept 
over into the Continent and made them- 
selves new friends. There was a nick- 
name which began now to be heard in 
England which concentrated in itself some- 
thing of the hate and scorn that used to 
hiss in the word " abolitionist." It was 



G\)t Hefomtera* 127 

the term " Lollard, " which was given to 
Wyclifs followers as they took up the 
practice of street-preaching, that they 
might the more easily counteract the work 
of the begging friars. The spirit of Wyclif, 
reinforced by the social discontent, the 
hatred of the barons toward the priests, 
the new demand for purer living, made its 
way everywhere. The new sect was om- 
nipresent, and in its one great tenet, a faith 
in the sole authority of the Bible as the 
word of truth, was the prophecy of the 
coming struggle. To be of this hated 
name, to call one's self a Lollard, to be- 
lieve that a layman was free to read the 
Bible, to preach these heresies openly, was 
to incur persecution and martyrdom. But 
in such an age and among such hearts 
martyrdom is but fuel to feed the fires of 
conviction and sacrifice. The movement 
passed over the Channel from England. 
It spread on the Continent. It attracted 
the attention of devout and sincere church- 
men everywhere, and it reached among 
others the attention of John Huss, a Bo- 
hemian of the city of Prague. For years 
the clergy of that city had been preaching 
against the corruptions of the Church 



128 Christian £y#t$ of fyttoi&m. 

and denying the divine origin of the hier- 
archy which had established itself at Rome. 
The soil was prepared for the seed which 
Wyclif had been sowing, and the Bohemian 
reformer insisted with an ominous per- 
sistency upon the principles which were 
destined one day to split the Church. 
In a day of the centralization of power and 
the support of religion by taxes and tribute, 
John Huss advanced the doctrines of Con- 
gregationalism and the voluntary support 
of worship. These were bold things to 
advocate in a time when to question the 
authority of the Church was to invite the 
exercise of that authority against one's 
self, but Huss did a still bolder. When 
Pope John XXIII., to raise money for his 
war against Naples, offered indulgences for 
sale, Huss burned the papal bull at the 
public pillory, denouncing the whole pro- 
ceeding as wicked and unwarrantable. 
That does not seem so much, perhaps, 
to us, who enjoy all the fruits of the 
freedom of conscience these men bought 
for us, but it was a daring and heroic act. 
Christian men, priests of the Holy Church, 
were not allowed such latitude of action 
in those times, and most heroically was 



Zfyz Heformerg* 129 

John Huss to answer for it. He was sum- 
moned to Constance to explain his her- 
esies or to retract them. He went under 
pledge of safe conduct, but the Church did 
not consider it necessary to keep faith 
with infidels, and so he was seized and 
imprisoned. He was cruelly executed in 
141 5, but not until he had given a new 
impulse to the life which was starting in 
the veins of Europe. It was the hand 
of Huss that passed the torch of the Ref- 
ormation on from Wyclif to Luther. 

But while these influences were abroad 
in England and in Germany they were not 
wanting elsewhere. Italy was alive. The 
revival of learning had affected no land 
more brilliantly, and the free cities with 
their republican spirit and governments 
were ripening for revolt against the now 
overgrown papacy; and in Florence, the 
richest of all these cities, the rebellion 
flamed up into open defiance. Here in 
this opulent city, famed in all Europe as 
it is in all later ages for its distinctions 
in art, in political liberty, in wealth, and 
in magnificence, lived and died one of 
the truest and boldest hearts the Church 
ever claimed. 

9 



130 Christian typte of fytxotem. 

Jerome Savonarola was a true reformer. 
He spared no sin of his city or her cit- 
izens. He sought with all the intensity 
of a sincere nature to purify his Church of 
her corruptness; and his career is one 
more of those brilliant examples of the 
inspiration which the Christian faith gives 
to bold hearts to put forth all their 
strength and live out all the native force 
there is within them. He was a preacher 
at the famous church of Saint Mark's, and 
like almost every other man of note in 
those ages, a member of a monastic order, 
being a Dominican friar. From the pulpit 
of the popular church he poured forth his 
fiery denunciations of the sinfulness of 
Florence. His utterances carried more 
weight than those of any man in Florence, 
and he used his influence to promote pure 
living and consecrated hearts. He was 
the favorite and the leader of the populace, 
and when Charles VIII. of France ap- 
peared before the walls of the city and it 
was betrayed into his hands, Savonarola 
was summoned to intercede with the king. 
He saved the city, and when Charles soon 
after left it, Savonarola was again sum- 
moned to direct affairs in the re-organiza- 



£tje Heformrrs* 131 

tion of the government. It was a little 
republic which he founded within the walls 
of Florence. This liberty-loving monk 
gave the people representation, and who- 
ever loves the principles of representative 
government is bound to honor the memory 
of this Florentine priest. 

But alas ! there were few such souls 
in Italy then; few that loved freedom; 
few that could bear with the unsparing 
righteousness of an outspoken reformer. 
Especially was his ardor for freedom and 
for pure morals distasteful to the Pope, 
and when we have said that, we have 
intimated the fate of Savonarola. When 
a man in those days entered into a con- 
troversy with a pope, it was like arguing 
with the law of gravitation. In the midst 
of the profoundest tumult and popular 
discontent Savonarola was excommuni- 
cated. The tragic end of it all was de- 
ferred for a little, but it could not be 
averted ; and when at last a summons 
came for him to appear before a tribunal, 
the end had come. He died a martyr to 
truth; and Martin Luther, declaring that 
Savonarola was a forerunner of his own 
teaching, says of him : " He was burned 



132 Christian £ypt& of fyttotem. 

by the Pope, but he lives in blessedness, 
and Christianity has canonized him." 

Such were the men and such the spirit 
which prepared the way for the religious 
revolution of the sixteenth century. In se- 
lecting these famous names we have taken 
only an example of the great movement 
in spirit and in thought which was in 
progress all through the Christian world. 
As yet it was a hard and a daring thing 
to attempt to lead that movement or to 
speak in its favor. It meant persecution, 
it meant ostracism, it meant death. And 
that these men and their brave follow- 
ers were undeterred by the marshalled 
strength of Europe, the allied interests of 
Church and popular prejudice striving to 
hush their speech and intimidate their 
hearts, is a signal illustration and proof of 
the thesis we are seeking to maintain, — that 
the strong and aggressive virtues of man- 
hood, which thrill, inspire, and fascinate us, 
have suffered no languor with the spread 
of the spirit of Christianity. 

And now we come to the moment when, 
at thirty-five, Martin Luther sounded the 
call of the Reformation. It is so familiar 
that we scarce need go over the story. 



t\)t Ueformersu 133 

The tale has been told till all men know 
it, how Pope Leo X., wishing to build St. 
Peter's according to the designs furnished 
by Michael Angelo, wanted large sums of 
money from the faithful throughout Eu- 
rope. All the world knows the scandalous 
means which this polished ecclesiastic, this 
churchly gentleman, this patron of the 
arts, took to replenish his treasury; how 
he sent monks far and wide with papal 
dispensations and indulgences, how these 
were permissions to do what the Church 
forbade to be done, to eat meat on fast 
days, to marry near relations, to do any 
questionable act, the concession to be paid 
for by the merits of dead saints, " placed 
to the account of the delinquents by 
the Pope's letters in consideration of 
value received. " It was a virtual per- 
mission to sin, with pardon granted in 
advance and the pardon paid for by the 
prospective sinner. And a Dominican 
monk, Tetzel by name, actually appeared 
one day in Wittenberg and began to ped- 
dle his singular wares in Luther's town. 
" Now you can ransom your souls," he 
cried. " Hard-hearted man, with twelve 
pence you can deliver your father out of 



134 Ctjrtettan typts of fytvoism. 

purgatory. The Lord has committed all 
power to the Pope." And he told the 
people that the moment their money 
tinkled in his box, the soul flew out of 
purgatory. This was the man, a profligate 
monk, parading with drum and bell from 
town to town, who called forth the ire of 
Dr. Martin Luther, and precipitated the 
struggle that shook the world. " Please 
God," said Luther, " I will make a hole in 
that drum of his." And so he did, but 
not until its noisy rattle had started all 
Europe into an uproar. 

It sometimes happens in the mountain 
districts, that after long and heavy rains 
the soil, saturated and loosened by the 
moisture, hangs to the bare rock under- 
neath by the most insecure grasp and 
needs but the slightest shock to bring it 
down, with rocks, trees, and herbage, in 
one great crash into the valleys below. 
Then it is a perilous time, for the firing 
of a gun, the stroke of the woodman's axe, 
or even the shout from a human voice 
may set the air in vibration and start the 
avalanche. So all Europe hung on the 
verge of a landslide at the beginning of 
the sixteenth century. In Church, in State, 



£t)t Utfotmm. 135 

in the arts, in the world of thought, society 
clung but loosely to the old order, was 
ready to slip away at any moment; and 
when Tetzel's drum beat in the streets of 
Wittenberg, the waiting air caught up its 
dull vibrations and rolled their echoes up 
the mountain-sides, till the Alps and the 
Apennines, the stormy fastnesses of Scan- 
dinavia and the crags of old Albion 
shivered and shook, and rumbled and 
gave back the sound in a reverberation 
that brought down churches and States, 
old systems and manners grown corrupt, 
burying the life and the sins of the Middle 
Ages in one vast ruin. 

On the 31st of October, 15 17, Luther 
nailed to the door of the Church in Witten- 
berg his ninety-five theses against the doc- 
trine of indulgences. " Every Christian, " 
they asserted, "who truly repents of his 
sins has entire forgiveness of the penalty 
and the fault, and so far has no need of 
indulgence. . . . The Pope cannot by his 
indulgence take away the smallest daily 
sin, in regard to the fault or delinquency." 
That was the gage of battle Luther flung 
down. It was the beginning of a tremen- 
dous debate. The defenders of the Church 



136 Christian typts of heroism* 

rushed to the rescue and strove to crush 
the daring man who lifted his feeble voice 
against a pope, and defied the authorities 
and the resources of the Church universal. 
Pope Leo heard of the trouble but pro- 
nounced it only a squabble of monks. 
When he saw the theses he only laughed 
at them in easy contempt. " A drunken 
German wrote them," he said, "when he 
has slept off his wine he will be of another 
mind." Various prelates tried their vari- 
ous arts on Luther, now persuading, now 
threatening, always seeking to dissuade 
him from his position and keep him quiet. 
But at all events he must retract. This 
man must be stopped in his course ; if 
he went on, what would become of the 
monks? They could not make a living 
if the people thought their sins would be 
forgiven without the hired help of the 
clergy. As a great historian has said, " If 
souls could not be sung out of purgatory, 
their occupation was gone." They would 
have killed him if they could, as John 
Huss had been killed, and Jerome Savon- 
arola, who fell in the skirmish-line of the 
Reformation. But a powerful and friendly 
prince stood between him and any such 



£t)e Keformers* 137 

untoward fate. Frederick the Elector of 
Saxony would not consent to do anything 
against Luther, and without this prince no 
action could touch him. Then the Pope 
sent for him to come to Rome. But fin- 
ally the Pope's legate met the contuma- 
cious monk at Wittenberg. The cardinal 
did everything but argue with him. He 
was too shrewd to do that, — Luther would 
have made him ridiculous. But he could 
remonstrate, he could threaten, he could 
offer bribes, he could point out the ab- 
surdity of this poor friar's defying the 
power of the spiritual sovereign of Chris- 
tendom. But one thing he could not do. 
He could not turn Martin Luther from his 
conviction of the truth. 

So the mission of the legate ended. He 
went home to his master. The Pope ex- 
communicated Luther. The quarrel went 
on. It was a battle between a poor monk 
% and the supreme pontiff of Christendom. 
There were debates, writings of pamphlets, 
talk among the people, ranging of men on 
one side or the other. At last the Pope 
issued another bull against Luther, and 
the daring man burned it in the public 
square at Wittenberg, and a great con- 



138 Christian Zypts of heroism* 

course of people looked on with shouts 
of approval. " It was the shout," says 
Carlyle, " of the awakening of nations ! " 

The time would fail us to trace in every 
detail the sequence of events which thrust 
Luther forward, made his great gifts man- 
ifest, and developed the Reformation. 
The one famous scene at Worms will 
never die out of history. It was in April, 
1 52 1. The Diet of the Empire assembled 
there, and Luther was summoned into the 
presence of Charles V. to defend himself. 
It was peril to go. He had no assurance 
of safety. The Church was treacherous 
then, and many a man had been put out 
of the way who dared to thwart her min- 
isters. As Luther went thither a friend 
came to warn him that if he went on he 
was a dead man. Luther trembled. He 
was sensible to danger. But here his true 
courage appeared in his immortal answer, 
" I would go thither if there were as many 
devils in Worms as tiles on the roofs of 
the houses." And there before the sov- 
ereign of half Europe, before archbishops 
and ministers of State, before princes and 
knights of the realm, this poor miner's son 
stood up to defend himself from the charge 



<t\)t Meformersu 139 

of teaching doctrines which the Pope had 
pronounced false. And what was his re- 
ply? Why, simply that if they would not 
merely declare his doctrines false, but 
prove them so, he would retract, not other- 
wise. There was the gist of the whole 
Reformation. It was saying in effect that 
the Pope's " say so" was not enough; that 
nothing was true because the Pope af- 
firmed it. It was a remarkable saying. 
It was simple enough. Any man might 
have said it. But no man had said it till 
Luther dared to. And when he spoke, 
the inflated bubble of papal authority that 
had glittered all through the Middle Ages, 
now with a splendor that almost deceived 
the wise into believing it solid and real, 
now with lurid gleams that had warned 
the wary of its hollowness and humbug, 
burst and disappeared. It was the greatest 
moment in modern history. The fate of 
Christendom hung on Luther's words. If 
he wavered, men might go on believing the 
old lies, yielding a hollow allegiance, sick- 
ening over the shams that they hated, 
trammelled in thought, in utterance, and 
in action. If he recanted, he would turn 



ho Christian typts of tyttoi&m. 

back the hour-hand of progress for cen- 
turies. But hear him ! Hark to his brave 
words ! " Here am I ! God help me, I 
cannot otherwise ! " Thank God ! Thank 
God ! brave monk, thou hast saved us. 
Thou hast spoken the word which opens 
a new age to man. Thou hast proclaimed 
a new day to Christianity and a new civil- 
ization to society. It is thy stanch cour- 
age which drew its strength out of the 
heart of the Man of Nazareth which has 
prevailed over the mighty. And as long 
as the world canonizes strength and stead- 
fastness, thy name shall shine among the 
brightest of heroic souls ! 

In this episode we confront the most 
signal type of heroism which the Church 
has cherished. It is harder to differ from 
one's friends and call them to account for 
sins and errors than it is to turn on ene- 
mies and outsiders. It is a heavier cross 
to bear the coldness of the family circle 
than to hear the rabble without denounce 
or jeer. The men who from the standpoint 
of the Church denounced the Church, 
whom the Church put to death because of 
the good they meant to her own cause; 



t\)t Meformers* 141 

who suffered her anathema, and knew that 
after she had tortured them she would not 
harbor their poor bones in her tombs, all 
because they loved her too well to see her 
die in her sins, — these were among the 
noblest heroes she ever had. They are 
the choicest type of Christian heroism. 



VI. 

THE MISSIONARIES. 



The field is the world. — Matt. xiii. 38. 

With all his sufferings full in view 

And woes to us unknown, 
Forth to the task his spirit flew. 

'T was love that urged him on. 

Cowper. 

And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, 
having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that 
dwell on the earth, and to every nation and kindred and 
tongue and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God 
and give glory to him ; for the hour of his judgment 
is come : and worship him that made heaven and earth 
and sea, and the fountains of waters. — Rev. xiv. 6, 7, 

Bestir yourselves, then, ye heroic and illustrious 
leaders of the army of Christ. . . . Overturn, quench, 
destroy, not men but ignorance, godlessness, and other 
sins. ... It is hard work I call you to, but it is highest 
and noblest of all. — Erasmus : Art of Preaching. 



VI. 

THE MISSIONARIES. 

/CHRISTIANITY is the only religion 
which has aimed at the conversion 
of the world. It was a mark of its foun- 
der's singularity among men that he 
avowedly planned a world-wide conquest 
through the preaching of his word. He 
entered a world which was a stranger to 
his name, and deliberately planned a spirit- 
ual crusade which he intended should leave 
him the master of the ends of the earth. 

It seems to be a characteristic of the 
great philosophers of the world that they 
address themselves only to a small spir- 
itual aristocracy, and the greater the 
philosopher the fewer souls he expects to 
touch ; but this greatest of teachers re- 
verses the principle at the very beginning. 
His avowed object is the conversion of the 
world. He aims at the hearts of all men, 
and most wonderful and most characteris- 
10 



146 Christian Zypt3 of S?erotenu 

tic of all, he sets on foot a scheme which he 
never expects to see perfected, but which 
he looks to see executed only in the final 
harvest of the world. " This thought of 
a universal kingdom cemented in God," 
says Horace Bushnell, u why ! the im- 
mense Roman Empire of his day, con- 
structed by so many ages of war and 
conquest, is a bauble in comparison, both 
as regards the extent and the cost; and 
yet the rustic craftsman of Galilee pro- 
pounds even this for his errand, and that 
in a way of assurance as simple and quiet 
as if the immense reach of his plan were 
in fact a matter to him of no considera- 
tion. " The only great religious movements 
that ever offered even a remote resem- 
blance in this respect to Christianity were 
Mohammedanism and Buddhism ; but the 
sword of Islam, drawn to propagate a 
temporal and worldly power, swept only 
the Oriental races, and Buddhism never 
looked outside the farther east. Chris- 
tianity alone has conceived the purpose 
and carried it out, of establishing its 
churches on every coast from the shores 
of Greenland to the Antarctic Circle. It 
aims at the spiritual dominion of the whole 



£t)t $$i&&ionmt8. 147 

world. It sends its messengers to every 
land under the sun. It has entered upon 
a campaign which confessedly can only be 
carried out in a long series of ages ; but 
its leaders and its workers aim at nothing 
less, will be content with nothing less, and 
already the signs point most encouragingly 
toward the consummation of the scheme. 
One of the most interesting documents 
a man can study is a chart of the world's 
religions. It. is more interesting even and 
more significant than a map of political 
geography, for it sets before the eye the 
signs of the great religious movements of 
society. It indicates the trend of faith and 
of spiritual life. It enables us from year 
to year to satisfy ourselves that this world 
is advancing out of paganism into Chris- 
tianity. Imagine such a map to lie before 
you. Recall the time, nearly two thou- 
sand years ago, when the foothold of 
Christianity in the earth could have been 
covered by a needle's point on the chart, 
or that earlier day when there was no 
such thing in existence. For years after 
its founder's death this obscure religion 
was colonized in a few towns along the 
Mediterranean Sea. 



148 Christian typt& of fytvoi&m. 

Since then what changes have occurred ! 
Europe, with its dense populations, owns 
allegiance to Jesus Christ; and stretching 
eastward across the continent to the Pa- 
cific, the great Russian Empire mingles 
with the pagan influences of the native 
races the name and power of Christianity. 
To the south and east the sturdy enter- 
prise of Englishmen and of Americans has 
carried the gospel to South Africa, has half 
converted Madagascar, and has brought 
Australia and New Zealand well under the 
power of the cross. The dense popula- 
tions of India feel the pressure of Chris- 
tianity and show results not to be meas- 
ured by the mere catalogue of conversions. 
If we turn to the west, the inspiring spec- 
tacle is presented of an entire hemisphere 
dominated and governed by Christian 
principle and thought, which run deeply 
into all its institutions. But that is not 
the most significant nor the most cheer- 
ing fact to Christian men, for these con- 
quests might be only the culmination of 
forces already spent, and about to decline 
or suffer reaction ; but that we are wit- 
nesses to no such weakening of the forces 
which have already conquered so many 



£tje sptetftonartefiu 149 

millions of earth's multitudes is proved 
by the fact that wherever heathenism is 
most strongly entrenched we see the out- 
posts of the Christian forces, encamped 
like a beleaguering army, advancing their 
lines, but never withdrawing them, year 
after year. Africa is belted with mission 
stations from Gibraltar to the Red Sea 
and from Sierra Leone to Zanzibar. The 
intrepid spirit of Livingstone has opened 
the heart of the Dark Continent to Europe 
and the influences of the cross, and al- 
ready one faithful bishop has renewed the 
ancient story of martyrdom in the way 
of loving duty there. The coasts of China 
are fringed with missionary posts, and the 
islands of the South Seas are full of them. 
The great Empire of Japan is opening 
its mind and heart to Christianity, and 
among the uncivilized peoples of Amer- 
ica a work is going on which cannot be 
put upon any map, but whose full sig- 
nificance can only be felt by those who 
have followed the noble labors of Christian 
philanthropy at Hampton and Carlisle. 
These signs all point to a vigor of spirit 
still unabated, a purpose fresh and ear* 
nest, a consecration which deepens as the 



150 Christian typts of heroism* 

years go by ; and they all show as plainly 
as indications may that future when the 
map to the world shall be a chart of 
Christendom. 

Now in this fact alone, standing before 
us in the emphasis of statistics and pic- 
tured outlines, is a powerful proof of the 
principle we are discussing. Great re- 
sults in human life are never accomplished 
without great forces. The change of a 
world's convictions, the renewal of its re- 
ligious thought, the readjustment of the 
lines of its religious allegiance, have not 
been accomplished without the expendi- 
ture of immense personal force, the ap- 
plication of the largest resources of energy 
and strength in character. There must have 
been unbounded courage to undertake the 
task, and even dream of the conversion of 
a world in which there were not as yet 
five hundred believers. The continuation 
of the labor through years and decades 
and centuries bears witness to the unflinch- 
ing persistence of those who carried it on. 
The triumphs of the Church have cost 
unspeakable effort, inestimable sacrifices; 
and effort and sacrifice only come out of 
the strongest natures. And so we have 



Ztyt $$i&&ionntitg. 151 

only to point to the map of the world's 
religious states, and compare it with one 
which might have been drawn a hundred 
years before Christ, to summon a wit- 
ness to the presence of the most indomi- 
table vigor in Christian souls all through 
the Christian ages. 

As we seek the records once more, we 
find that the spirit which has founded these 
missions and which has already overcome 
one third of the population of the globe 
began with the beginnings of Christianity. 
It dates from the day in which Jesus called 
his disciples together and sent them forth 
to " all the world," to preach the gospel. 
All the apostles had this spirit. It was 
the motive of their work. It is the spirit 
which ever since has marked the admin- 
istration of the affairs of Christendom with 
aggressive zeal and the energy of a con- 
viction which burns for converts. From 
the beginning, one characteristic of Chris- 
tianity which has never failed nor varied 
in any age or clime has been its unflag- 
ging aim to push its borders and spread 
its influence as fast and as far as human 
power could carry them. 

First of all the great missionaries, the 



152 Christian ty$t& of heroism* 

worthy leader of an illustrious band, was 
Paul. He was the earliest to catch the 
thought of Christ that the gospel was 
for all men, and that by its very terms the 
exclusiveness of Judaism was abolished 
forever. To him we owe the christianiz- 
ing of Europe, and he took all Europe 
into the field of his labors. He traversed 
the continent from the hills of Syria to the 
coasts of Spain, touching all the great 
cities and laying in them the foundations 
of the great world-church of the future. 
To him we owe the capture of the great 
centres from which the Christianity of the 
Empire pushed out its lines of influence. 
Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Thessalonica, 
all held churches which felt his fostering 
care and received his anxious thought. In 
them were established the first mission- 
stations of the gospel, and in them Paul 
met the opposition and the contempt of 
Jew and Gentile, as he unfolded to cold 
and unsympathizing hearts the glad tidings 
of the new comer into the world's life. 

There is no finer spectacle in history 
than that of the great leader of Christian 
missionaries sallying forth in poverty and 
in obscurity, a stranger in a great world, 



tfyt $$i8<$ionmt&. 153 

with no friend but his God, with no war- 
rant of safety or of success save in the 
cause for which he went and the courage 
which filled his heart, meeting indifference 
with zeal, persecutions with patience, op- 
position with firmness, and discouragement 
with a deeper faith. There certainly never 
was a harder test of zeal, of enterprise, of 
courage, of endurance, of persevering ac- 
tivity than this man, single-handed against 
the world, unsustained even by the Chris- 
tians whom he represented, turning to 
the gentile world, which showed not one 
friendly face, and starting on his work of 
conversion. Worldly wisdom would not 
have predicted much from that expedition 
when Paul set sail for Cyprus on his first 
journey. Still less would it have looked 
for anything more from him, when in latej* 
years it saw him chained to a soldier's 
wrist, in the streets of Rome, or when he 
bowed his head to the executioner's sword. 
Little indeed was there in these events to 
hint that his would yet be, next to that of 
Jesus Christ, the most famous name in all 
history; and yet to-day, in the heart of 
the most populous and famous of all mod- 
ern cities, there rises a splendid dome, 



154 Christian typtsf of heroism* 

the work of London's great architect, to 
carry to all the world the fame of Paul 
the Apostle, the captain of the mission- 
aries of Jesus Christ. 

From Saint Paul onward the missionary 
spirit never flagged nor failed in all the 
Church. Its representatives appear in 
every age. Heart seemed to catch it from 
heart, and from age to age the work was 
handed on. In olden times, when the 
tidings of invasion were to be spread 
through the wild and sparsely settled 
country-side, or the levies summoned for 
attack, the fires were kindled on the hill- 
tops, beacons flashed from peak to peak, 
as if one flame kindled another. So from 
age to age, from church to church, from 
heart to heart, flashed the fires of mis- 
sionary enterprise in the Church, rousing 
the loyal and stirring the faint heart with 
the marvellous enterprise of the seeker 
after souls. 

Gibbon says, "The progress of Chris- 
tianity has been marked by two glorious 
and decisive victories, one over the learned 
and luxurious Romans, the other over the 
warlike barbarians of Scythia and Ger- 
many." Foremost of these tribes, the 



t\)t tyti&ionmts. 155 

sturdy and aggressive conquerors of Rome, 
were the Goths; and in proportion as 
they appeared pre-eminent among their 
fellows, did they excite the ambition of 
Christian hearts to conquer them for the 
cross. And when in the dispersion of the 
Christians by Gallienus, numbers of them 
were distributed in Gothic communities, 
the captives would not be silenced, but 
pressed the claims of their faith upon the 
nation with which they were domiciled, 
until many a convert rewarded their faith- 
ful zeal, and the foundation was laid for 
the Christianity of Middle Europe. And 
Ulphilas, himself a Goth and afterward a 
bishop, gave his life to the spreading and 
up-building of the faith. It was he who 
with infinite pains invented an alphabet 
for his people and then translated for 
them the whole of the Bible, save, it is 
said, the books of Chronicles and Kings, 
which he deemed too full of the stories of 
war for his turbulent people. And thus 
through the courageous enterprise of this 
man, the first of those translations was 
made, which have finally put the Bible 
into the native tongue of almost every 
nation and people upon the face of the 



156 Christian <£ypt8 of heroism* 

globe and given the missionaries their 
mightiest weapon in the moral renewal of 
the world. For everywhere the men who 
go to win the souls of the heathen carry 
with them, as the source of their power 
and the authority by which they speak, 
this sacred volume. And wherever they 
bring it and place it before mankind, it 
wins its way, past criticism, past prejudice, 
past hostility, down to the reason and the 
conscience of mankind. 

The time would fail to tell in detail of 
all the brave souls who entered into the 
missionary work in the early centuries. 
In the fifth century Saint Patrick wrought 
his ever-famous work in Ireland. John 
Richard Green has said that " when the 
Scotch-Irish Christianity burst upon west- 
ern Christendom, it brought with it an 
enthusiasm, an energy, an earnestness 
greater than any it found there. " In the 
sixth century Saint Columba begun a holy 
work amid the scenes which Black's pen 
has made so famous in the West Highlands 
of old Scotia, — 

" When Christian piety's soul-cheering spark, 
Kindled from heaven between the light and dark 
Of time, shone like the morning star." 



GX)t spisgionarietf* 157 

In the seventh century there occurred an 
incident in the streets of Rome of special 
interest to all who reckon their pedigree 
from English stock. Passing one day by 
a slave-market, a young deacon in the 
Church noted the white bodies, the fair 
faces, and the golden hair of some youths 
who were exposed there for sale. " From 
what country do these captives come?" he 
asked of the traders who brought them. 
"They are English, — Angles," was the an- 
swer. " Not Angles," was the answer of 
the young deacon, " but angels." Years 
passed on and the youth became pope 
under title of Gregory the Great. But he 
had never forgotten the fair-haired slaves 
nor their land, and he sought an open- 
ing to send them a missionary who should 
convert them to Christ. It was a Roman 
abbot, Augustine by name, who was se- 
lected. He and his followers entered the 
island from the very spot where a century 
before Hengist the Englishman had first 
landed on the Isle of Thanet. The monk 
came on a different errand from that which 
drew the bold warriors from Jutland, but 
his too was a mission of conquest and one 
which in the end cost no less of strength, 



158 Cretan typt£ of heroism* 

of sacrifice, of courage than the long wars 
which reduced England to civilization. 
Side by side with the men who gave Eng- 
land political form, freedom, law, and 
constitutional government struggled and 
strove the men of God who established 
the power of Christianity in the realm, and 
so did their share toward promoting the 
land to the eminence she holds among 
nations. 

But now, with the days of the Reforma- 
tion, with Europe substantially Christian, 
the missionary spirit sought new worlds in 
which to spend its powers and bestow its 
zeal. And these came to hand, for new 
realms had been opened by the discovery 
of the Cape of Good Hope and the new 
route to the Indies ; while Columbus had 
just laid the new world of the west a 
gift at the feet of Europe. With these 
new realms came a spirit which sought to 
conquer and to convert them. As the 
world expanded before them, Christians 
seemed to hear the words of Christ sound- 
ing with new emphasis in their ears, " Go 
ye into all the world and preach the Gos- 
pel to every creature." With the new call 
they girded themselves for fresh toils. 



Gfyz §0i$<sionmtg. 159 

And here we meet the name of that con- 
secrated soul who was the pioneer of east- 
ern missions, Saint Francis Xavier. It 
may be truthfully said that Martin Luther 
gave him to the world ; for when Luther 
reformed the Protestant branch of the 
Church, the power of his influence reacted 
upon Rome, and caused a season of repent- 
ance and purification to prevail there. The 
sturdy old friar purified the life of Mother 
Church at the same time that he created 
Protestantism ; and foremost among the 
instrumentalities for effecting that renewal 
was the Society of Jesus, whose famous 
founder was Ignatius Loyola. This sol- 
dier-priest took under his especial care the 
careless, pleasure-loving, brilliant scion of 
the house of Xavier, till he made him 
his convert and won his whole soul to the 
work of the cross. And when John III. 
of Portugal desired to send some one who 
should plant Christianity in India, Xavier 
embraced with joy the perilous and awful 
undertaking. Penniless and solitary, he 
embarked upon a strange vessel for the 
port of Goa. Here in the midst of 
depravities which shocked and repelled 
him, he worked with unflagging zeal to 



160 Christian typts of fytvoi&m. 

reform and to convert. He was insensi- 
ble to danger and shrunk from no pri- 
vation and no pain; from town to town 
he strove single-handed to make a home 
for the true faith in the hearts of these 
heathen. With unswerving courage he 
faced alike the rage of the idol-priests, 
the perils of the pestilence, and the dan- 
gers of the earthquake. He loved his 
work, and took all its privations and its 
sufferings with a patient and a manly 
heart. Moved at last to go and plant 
the gospel in China, he had hardly 
landed upon that hostile coast when he 
was called from his work. There on the 
dreary beach, in the wasting agonies of a 
fever, he died with the words on his lips, 
" In Thee, O Lord, have I trusted, let me 
never be put to confusion. " Thus died, 
like Moses before the promised land, a 
devoted missionary of Jesus Christ; and 
let no Protestant fail to remember that 
long years before a missionary from the 
Church of the Reformation had ever set 
foot in the East, this courageous man had 
pushed forward with the cross, the fore- 
runner of that great host that has since 
encamped about Asia, till its ancient 



&)t $$i$8iQmtit&. 161 

kingdoms of error are beleaguered by the 
armies of the true God and his Christ. 

The missionary spirit seemed to fit with 
especial aptness the minds of the Jesuits. 
Their fanatical zeal, their magnificent dis- 
cipline, their austere life, all qualified them 
for this work which took them from all 
the things they most loved to the ends 
of a wild and savage earth. They early 
found their way in large numbers to 
South America. There they obtained a 
strong foothold and wrought a good work 
in rescuing the mild and peaceful natives 
from the cruelties of Spanish slavery and 
establishing them in orderly communities. 
And all through North America, from the 
St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, we 
find traces of the work of these brave 
men, lay brothers and priests, who labored 
with a dying race to give them the gos- 
pel, to redeem them from their evil lives, 
and at last to snatch them from the pains 
of purgatory. I know that the Jesuit's 
name has become synonymous with craft 
and selfish arts in religion. I am thankful 
beyond expression that the mission of 
these men in this wilderness was a failure, 
and that the wild and savage Iroquois 
ii 



1 62 Christian Zypts of heroism* 

frustrated all their plans. For thus was 
the day helped on which gave America 
to freedom and a pure Gospel. But for 
their heroic endurance, their daring, and 
their enterprise let us give all honor 
to these men ; and if any one questions 
whether Christian faith is favorable to 
firmness of fibre in character and cour- 
age in action, let him read the recital of 
the Jesuits in North America. He will 
never repeat the query. 

But up to the beginning of the pres- 
ent century, the Protestant churches had 
little of the missionary spirit. Indeed it 
would scarcely be believed in circles so 
committed to the missionary work as our 
evangelical churches are to-day, that a 
hundred years ago the practical temper 
of these same churches was absolutely 
opposed to missions to the heathen. It 
is less than a century since a young 
man pleading in a British assembly of 
churches for missionary work among the 
heathen was silenced by the venerable 
chairman, who exclaimed, " Sit down, 
young man ; when the Almighty wishes 
to convert the heathen he will do it with- 
out your help or mine." In 1810, Ado- 



tfyt $$ig$iomtit$. 163 

niram Judson and four others inquired of 
the General Association of Independent 
Ministers, meeting at Bradford, Massachu- 
setts, whether they might expect support 
from a missionary society in this country 
or must commit themselves to foreign 
help ; and in the face of strong adverse 
public sentiment, the American Board 
was formed that same year. That spirit 
passed away long years ago, and since 
those days a steady column of workers 
has been moving to heathen lands to carry 
the good tidings of joy to all people. 

The list is a long and honorable one. 
It includes such men as William Carey, 
the poor shoemaker who founded the Bap- 
tist Missions in India, and Henry Martyn, 
the thoughtful and educated Cambridge 
graduate who gave up his life in the work 
of Asiatic missions, and Reginald Heber, 
whose two years in India immortalized 
him, though it took his life first. The 
world is the brighter and better for such 
lives. Does it seem as if the career of 
John Coleridge Patterson could have been 
more useful if he had buried himself in his 
studies at Oxford, or that David Living- 
stone could have bestowed his life to any 



1 64 Christian typt& of heroism* 

better advantage by staying at home and 
vegetating in England than he did by 
those brave years in which he labored to 
open the way for missionary effort in the 
very heart of Africa, and to "heal the 
open sore of the world," the negro slave- 
trade ? 

The world does not yet begin to know 
what it owes to these men and women, 
who have given their lives to the intro- 
duction of Christianity into foreign lands. 
Their work ripens but slowly, but it 
ripens all the same. These lands lie in 
wintry sluggishness now, but sometime 
we shall be surprised at the start they will 
give into Christian life. Meantime how 
fine the work, how manly and how brave, 
which these heroic souls are bestowing! 
It is like the toils and sacrifices of our 
Puritan fathers on old Massachusetts Bay. 
For they were striving to plant a com- 
monwealth of God upon the rugged coasts 
of the New World; while the Christian 
missionaries are seeking to plant that city 
of God in every land on earth. 



VII. 
THE PHILANTHROPISTS. 



There is a greater army 
That besets us round with strife, 
A starving numberless army, 
At all the gates of life. 

Longfellow. 

Who the Creator loves, created might 
Dreads not. 

Coleridge. 

Any man who puts his life in peril in a cause which is 
esteemed becomes the darling of all men. — Emerson. 

Before the eye of a purified reverence neither the 
giants of force nor the recluses of saintly austerity stand 
on so high a pedestal as the devoted benefactors of 
mankind. The heroes of honor are great ; but the 
heroes of service are greater. — Martineau. 



VII. 

THE PHILANTHROPISTS. 

T N the heart of the Eternal City stood a 
building which may fairly be called 
typical of the ancient civilization. The 
Coliseum, vast and gray, with its tiers of 
seats encircling that arena which was the 
focus for so many thousand eyes, was a 
natural outgrowth of the society which fell 
with it. It was the theatre where brute 
courage was put on exhibition to furnish 
a sensation for a brutal curiosity. It was 
the scene where applause was quick to 
reward the strong arm, the stubborn will, 
the stolid nerves which would not flinch 
at pain. It was the sign of deep degen- 
eracy and moral degradation. For when 
men are so at a loss for pleasures that 
they seek them in the spectacle furnished 
by the sacrifice of their own highest ideals ; 
when they prostitute the courage they 
honor to the entertainment of a holiday 
rabble ; when they debase the manly vigor 



1 68 Christian £y$t& of tyttoiem. 

which has won their national eminence into 
a show for jaded voluptuaries, then surely 
their shame is almost complete. But even 
in the moral darkness of such an environ- 
ment, one bright ray gleams. It is the fact 
that even in this riot of bad passions, the 
old reverence for personal force still asserts 
itself. 

There is hardly a city in modern Christ- 
endom which will not show an edifice 
equally characteristic of contemporary 
ideals. In every Christian community you 
may find some hospital or some asylum, 
some reformatory for evil natures or some 
shelter for diseased bodies, some building 
which bears witness to the universal Chris- 
tian sentiment of helpfulness and regard 
for the weak. No matter which of this 
class is chosen, it will be a typical Chris- 
tian edifice. It will stand for sentiments, 
moral forces, social convictions, as remote 
as possible from those which reared the 
Coliseum. But in one particular it will 
symbolize the same things. It will be a 
monument to a courage as real, a man- 
liness as vigorous, a fortitude as unflinch- 
ing, as ever prolonged the excitements of 
a Roman holiday. 



ttyt $\)ilmtt)topi$t&. 169 

Lest this seem a forced or an extrav- 
agant claim, consider its grounds in the 
facts of our civilized and christianized life. 

The impulse to philanthropy comes no 
doubt from a susceptible heart or a quick- 
ened moral nature ; and the moral awaken- 
ing of mankind at the appeal of Christianity 
was the signal for all those activities to ap- 
pear which have so alleviated and elevated 
human life. It has been a new world since 
Calvary and the Mount of Ascension. But 
the new spirit did not quench the old vir- 
tues ; it only breathed upon them to make 
them glow more deeply. It did not dry 
up the sources of the active and aggressive 
spirit; it only opened new channels in 
which it might run. The philanthropic 
passion, the zeal for humanity which Jesus 
Christ awakened in man, may move him to 
new undertakings on his brother's behalf. 
But to carry on these works calls for the 
same qualities of courage, fortitude, and 
persistence, the same disregard of per- 
sonal danger, the same tenacious hold on 
a difficult purpose, as have ever been the 
price of great accomplishments. The seed 
of philanthropy may be in a man, but it 
will never become a fruitful tree without 



i7° Christian £y$z& of heroism* 

courage, strength, and aggressive force. 
Many a man would like to help his fel- 
lows, if he only had the personal force; 
but there is no single detail of practical 
helpfulness to mankind which does not 
make large demands upon the strongest 
natures. You may sympathize with suf- 
fering men and women and long to re- 
lieve their physical pains. But have you 
the courage to hasten with the surgeon 
when he seizes his splints and bandages 
and goes to some railway wreck? Or 
could you pack your bag and go with 
the Red Cross nurses to the city devas- 
tated by the yellow fever or the cholera? 
You have faith in the latent spark of 
good in every man and would like to put 
your faith at work. But could you face a 
prison full of felons, mad with desperate 
hate, and without a weapon or a blow 
teach them the necessary lesson of sub- 
mission to the authority of will? Or could 
you toil day after day among these same 
moral outcasts with only the courage of 
hope to strengthen you in your efforts to 
reclaim them? You love the practices of 
temperance and of purity, and want to see 
them the custom of mankind. But can 



Ctje ptitlanctjroptst^ 171 

you plant yourself in your personal prac- 
tice where you would like all men to stand, 
and then, impervious to hostility, indiffer- 
ence, scorn, satire, resistance, slander, press 
the good you represent upon the unwill- 
ing minds of your fellow-men? It is a 
long way from the philanthropic impulse 
to its establishment in life. To feel the 
one demands only the gentle heart; to 
accomplish the other requires the stout 
will, the unflinching nerve, the aggressive 
resolve. 

Perhaps there is no more striking illus- 
tration of how philanthropy, that enthu- 
siasm for humanity which was born with 
Jesus Christ, though starting from a differ- 
ent impulse, comes to the same end and 
calls for the same spirit as the heroic tem- 
perament, than we may find in the Sanitary 
and the Christian Commissions during the 
Civil War in America. Here were two great 
organizations, thoroughly representative of 
the Christian character and civilization. 
They were the fruit of humane and Christian 
dispositions ; they represented the charity, 
the sympathy, the tenderness of the Amer- 
ican people, their trained conviction that 
the relief of suffering is a duty, and their 



1 72 Christian ^pes of fyttoi&m. 

almost unanimous belief that the moral 
welfare of a man is as important as his 
physical good ; they embodied the noblest 
ideals of the Christian Church as these are 
set forth in the parable of the Good 
Samaritan. With an impulse so entirely 
Christian, it will not be questioned that 
these great auxiliary bodies were entirely 
typical of the spirit of Christ in human 
hearts after nineteen centuries of its pre- 
valence on earth. But mark how identical 
was the response of this spirit to the call 
for courage, daring, and energy, with the 
behavior of the armies of the Union, the 
modern type of the primitive fighters of 
the world. It is written in the history of 
that struggle with what strength and per- 
sistence the work of the great Commissions 
was wrought, at what cost of personal 
effort, by what deeds of personal courage, 
with what energy and heroism. Wherever 
the soldiers went, there went the agent of 
the Commissions. When the battle began 
to rage, he was as prompt at the front 
as the troops themselves ; he pressed to 
the field when the fire was hottest, to bring 
off the wounded ; he went into the 
trenches and to the outposts on the picket 



£tje |^ilantyropt$t$* 173 

line; he eased the pangs of the dymg y 
gave Christian burial when possible, and 
marked the graves of the dead ; and when 
all was done he sent to the far-off home the 
tidings which saved many a stricken heart 
from the terrible suspense which added 
such a heavy burden to bereavement; he 
cared for friend and for foe ; he tended the 
sick, aided the returning prisoner, protected 
the helpless, sent the penniless on his way, 
and fed and clothed him as he went. And to 
do all this he shared the soldier's lot, en- 
dured the same privations, ran the same 
risks to liberty, limb, and life, and was to 
all intents and purpose his comrade in 
arms. The humane impulse of this noble 
band was wrought into deeds at the same 
cost of body and of heart as the patriotic 
impulse of the soldier. The love of man- 
kind led to the same dangers, burdens, 
sufferings as the love of country. Nor did 
the philanthropic spirit, the most profound 
perhaps which ever glorified the horrors 
of war, abate one particle the heroic dis- 
positions which it needed for its own 
incarnation in deeds. 

Sometimes in the heat of war's conten- 
tion the philanthropic instinct comes into 



174 Christian £ppes of heroism* 

direct collision with the coarser traits of the 
soldier. Then it acquits itself in no con- 
temptible fashion, but so as to command 
the proud respect of all who love a bold 
and determined action. Such an incident 
comes to us out of that bitter war of 1870 
between the French and Germans. Gen- 
eral Ambert tells the story of a train of 
wounded Frenchmen who were marched for 
five hours from the field of battle, till they 
came at last to Janville. The poor sufferers 
were ready to drop with fatigue and with 
pain ; but when they reached the public 
square a German officer ordered the con- 
voy to keep on to Toury, a three hours' 
journey farther. " No, no," cried the 
wounded men, " leave us by the roadside, 
if you will; we cannot go farther." At 
this moment there appeared the superior of 
the hospice of Janville, Mother St. Henry. 
She confronted the officer. The woman of 
peace joined issue with the man of war. 
"Sir," she exclaimed, "these wounded 
men do not belong to you ; they are my 
property. I will not have them dragged 
any farther." The officer resented her 
interference and would have sent the men 
on ; but he could not bear down her com- 



tl)t |3I)tlantl)ropt6t5o 17s 

manding and authoritative will. " No 
more of this," she cried. " It is dastardly to 
make the wounded suffer needlessly. 
Driver, take out your horses." The con- 
voy went no farther. The noble courage 
of the tender-hearted nun had vanquished 
the rough soldier. 

These examples, it is true, may be 
alleged as only new fruits from the old 
root and branches of war. Take away its 
rough discipline, it is said, and you will lose 
the product also, But what shall be 
thought of those instances without number 
in which this same spirit has ripened from 
the mild training of peace? The courage 
of philanthropy, if we may coin a phrase, 
is in modern life an every day requirement. 
The great catastrophes of our times, the 
tragedies of the railway, the horrors of 
accident in the mines, the devastations of 
flood and tornado, are almost daily calling 
some detachment of the innumerable army 
of those who love their kind to scenes as 
dreadful as the battlefield. When the 
cholera or the yellow fever fills a com- 
munity with the panic of fear, the fleeing 
people always leave behind them a deter- 
mined band of men and women, fit expo- 



176 Christian typts of heroism* 

nents of the Christianity in whose spirit 
they have been trained, whose only thought 
is of their suffering fellows, and who are 
prepared to give life itself if need be, in 
the ministry of relief. Florence Night- 
ingale, discharged from her voluntary ser- 
vice in the Crimea, becomes the pioneer 
in reforms and sanitary progress in the 
hospitals and homes of England. Clara 
Barton, closing her labors with the na- 
tional armies when the last volunteer was 
mustered out, entered upon a work as 
useful and as heroic, in organizing and 
leading those large forces of philanthropy 
which wear the red cross of Geneva. 
The same women, or their daughters in the 
spirit, who fed the hungry soldier, changed 
his rags to comfort, nursed him in hospital, 
and gave their best strength to the care of 
all his needs and interests, — these women 
to-day are scattered up and down the land, 
doing the same work for these peaceful 
years as taxed the strength and courage in 
those war-days. They are struggling to 
stem the great tides of pauperism, idleness, 
and ignorance which have for years 
poured in upon America. They hold large 
responsibilities in the government of every 



t\)t philanthropists* 177 

hospital, charity board, and reformatory. 
They put protecting arms about little 
children, and stand between weak women 
and the tyrants and the villains who 
oppress or pursue them. They constitute 
an immense and indomitable army arrayed 
in a relentless struggle against the power 
of the saloon and the drink-habit. 

The quarter-century of peace in America 
since the close of the Civil War has wit- 
nessed a great awakening of the moral 
powers of society against the evils of society. 
With a fuller sense than ever this world had 
before of the gravity of its sinfulness and 
corruption, Christian men and women have 
shown a larger courage than ever to meet 
and overcome social evils, a more resolute 
front, and a more aggressive advance. 
Ours is called a material age, a mer- 
cenary and a scientific age, and we are 
assured that the future will remember us as 
devoted to the physical life and its claims. 
But it is an open question whether the last 
half of the nineteenth century will not be 
renowned as much for its interest in the 
humanities as for its material progress. 
Through all the sordidness and secularity of 
the time there has run a broadening stream 
12 



i73 Christian £ypt& of fyttoi&m. 

of humane energy and aggressive love for 
mankind. It may be doubted if there ever 
was an age which showed such a vast inter- 
est in man as man, labored so patiently for 
his advancement, or undertook so many 
humble and modest offices in his behalf. 
The world is teeming with organizations to 
relieve the unfortunate and to reform the 
bad. There is not a village large enough 
to support a church which does not main- 
tain a benevolent society too ; not a town 
is without its poor-house; vast hospitals 
here and there ; schools and houses of 
reform for the criminal, asylums for the 
insane, homes for the orphan, the help- 
less, the incurable, the aged. And these 
are the evidences, outward and patent, of 
that positive vigorous philanthropy which 
marks the present day. It differs from the 
philanthropy of the past chiefly in its 
hopefulness and courage; it is a more 
sanguine charity; it approaches disease 
and physical foulness with a braver faith in 
the possibility of their removal; it deals 
with moral depravity in the spirit of the 
injunction to overcome evil with good. 
There is to-day no disease so malignant or 
so foul that it can deter humane hearts from 



£t>e philanthropists* 179 

ministering to its victims and resisting its 
ravages ; there is no poverty so abject as 
to discourage the faithful disciples of the 
new charity; there are no felons so de- 
praved as to daunt the fearless souls bent 
on errands of reform and reclamation. 
The ancient forms of courage which cul- 
minated in the clash of the armed on- 
set could not bear comparison with this 
finer, firmer heroism, which shrinks at 
no moral or physical odds, but plants it- 
self across the path of the pestilence or 
attacks the inert ignorance of a peasantry 
or a city lodging-house population, deter- 
mined to exterminate the disease and to 
break up the mental sloth. It is easy to 
find the mere animal aggressiveness which 
has wielded most of the weapons in past 
ages and has pitted men against one another 
in physical combat. That is no rare trait ; 
nor is it one which can any longer command 
the admiration once accorded to it. The 
call is now for the strength and the cour- 
age which can confront and attack " princi- 
palities and powers," grapple with the 
swarming dangers to the physical man 
which lurk in earth and air and water, or 
cope with the subtler and more formidable 



180 Christian ^peg of S^erotem* 

foes of the spiritual man which ambush in 
the perverse will, the depraved affections, 
the dull obstinacy, or the inflexible pride of 
evil natures. 

No life in modern times exhibits this 
new type of courage and of strength in 
more impressive form than that of the man 
who almost created the latter-day meaning 
of the word " philanthropist." The career 
of John Howard was a long struggle with 
evils which afflicted the bodies and souls 
of the men and women of his generation. 
He was indeed an incarnation of Christian 
love. The motive of his life was the two 
great commandments. But he had a will 
of steel to do the bidding of that heart 
of love. His crusade against the enor- 
mities and abuses in the prisons of Great 
Britain put the severest strain upon the 
tenacity of his purpose and the courage 
of his faith. He found that numberless 
persons against whom the law had failed 
to prove any crime, or whom it had ac- 
quitted, were detained for months in foul 
prisons merely because they could not 
pay their jailers' fees. He undertook to 
overthrow this petty and demoralizing 
tyranny. He saw the direct way to a 



£f)e pinlantijroptets* 181 

reform of this abuse, in the abolition of 
the whole system of fees and the pay- 
ment of a salary to all prison officers. 
But that way was blocked by the giant 
which has checked so many reforms in 
England, — the inert bulk of old custom. 
Could he show a precedent for his de- 
mand? It required a personal visit of 
inspection to every prison in England to 
convince him that there was none. But 
then his courage rose to make the bold 
demand that humane Englishmen should 
make a precedent. The answer to that 
appeal was a law which ended this grave 
injustice and was the prelude to sweep- 
ing sanitary enactments. 

But the whole condition of prison admin- 
istration was disheartening to any lover of 
mankind. It might well have deterred a 
man less determined. To him it was only 
the occasion for more comprehensive plans 
and more thorough and exhausting labors. 
Let those who suspect the milder virtues 
of any softness or suppose that they be- 
gin and end in a yielding amiability, read 
anew the story of this man's self-appointed 
pilgrimage from nation to nation in Eu- 
rope, seeking the dismal secrets of its 



1 82 Christian £y$t£ of fymi&m. 

prisons, breathing the noisome airs of its 
dungeons, consorting with criminals, pau- 
pers, the neglected, and the plague-stricken, 
that he might remove some of their miser- 
ies and ameliorate their condition. Let 
them picture him forcing his way into the 
breeding-places of the pestilence, w r here 
no companion dared follow him, even em- 
barking in an infected ship that he might 
by experience learn all the horrors of the 
inhuman and inadequate quarantine of 
the time, pleading with the judgment 
of his contemporaries that his persistence 
might not be attributed to " rashness or 
enthusiasm, but to a serious and deliber- 
ate conviction," and dying at last from dis- 
ease contracted in the labors he took upon 
himself in a noble emulation of his Mas- 
ter. The tales of the Crusaders may be 
scanned in vain to find aught that par- 
allels this chivalrous tenderness, this in- 
domitable patience, this heroic bravery. 
Well did this man merit the eulogy of 
Bentham ! " In the scale of moral desert 
the labors of the legislator and the writer 
are as far below his as earth is below 
heaven. His kingdom is of a better world ; 
he died a martyr after living an apostle/' 



tfyt pijtlant^roptgc^ 183 

It may be urged that such a life as 
Howard's was only possible in a society in 
which human sinfulness and ignorance had 
begotten pain and oppression, and that in 
that ideal state to which man is advancing, 
the very perfection of his conduct w r ill re- 
move at once the provocative to this hu- 
mane energy and the conditions which 
keep it vigorous. But two probabilities 
may be suggested which rob this objec- 
tion of its force. First, it is too much to 
expect that mankind will ever be freed, 
even in a perfected moral state, from 

" The heartache and the thousand ills 
That flesh is heir to." 

Nature will see to that, in her rude vio- 
lence and untamable excesses which no 
civilization can ever subdue. The winds, 
the waves, the rushing floods, the trem- 
bling earth, the lightning, and the snow- 
storm will be man's rough trainers in 
physical vigor and in the lower forms of 
courage. No earthly wisdom or strength 
will avert those accidents which test the 
coolest heads and the stoutest hearts. 
The coward will always be contemptible ; 
the brave man will never lose his high 



1 84 Christian £]?pe0 of heroism* 

rank. The indomitable resolution which 
carried Hannibal over the Alps ; the con- 
tempt of death which led the Norsemen 
across stormy waters to hostile shores ; 
the scorn of cowardice which glorified the 
slaughter-field of Balaclava; the heroism 
which made the sinking of the Cumberland 
more splendid than any victory, could all 
be shown in a warless world, where man 
had only to maintain the struggle against 
Nature, his own faith in the spiritual forces, 
and his mastery over himself. Secondly, 
due allowance must be made for the ac- 
cumulation of moral energy which is con- 
tinually going on in the human race. This 
is the process which is elevating the physi- 
cal life of man, and generation by genera- 
tion developing and perfecting his bodily 
powers, until it fits him for achievements 
impossible to the savage. It is the pro- 
cess, moreover, which is enlarging his 
knowledge, his command over mind and 
matter, his insight into the secrets of the 
universe, and his ability to use its most 
subtle and gigantic forces. Heredity, 
memory, the currents of a finer physical 
life in our veins, the spirit of a loftier 
thought in our minds, are forever deepen- 



£t)t $\)ilmt\)topim. 185 

ing the channels and increasing the mo- 
mentum of our progress, and diminishing 
the possibility of reversion to a lower 
grade of being. Must we not expect the 
same process to go on in the realm of the 
moral nature, strengthening every noble 
passion, and putting all that is worthy of 
perpetuation in the soul beyond the reach 
of decay or of disuse? If we may believe 
with Herbert Spencer that " the ultimate 
development of the ideal man is logically 
certain," we may surely trust that that 
fact includes the preservation of whatever 
is best out of his past. And until we are 
prepared to say that the force and the 
courage of the earlier manhood is a part 
of the legacy which ought to be rejected, 
we may trust in its perpetuation as a part 
of the equipment of the coming man, 
the human soul made perfect in Jesus 
Christ. 

There is nothing, then, in the enlarge- 
ment of the philanthropic spirit to make 
us fear that it will sap man's heroic nature 
and drain it of its energies. The philan- 
thropists add their quota to the roll of 
heroes under the Christian spirit. The 
soft touch of love is still but the last 



1 86 Cijrtetian typt& of heroism* 

refinement of courage and of strength. 
As long as the world lasts — 

" True hearts will leap up at the trumpet of God, 
And those who can suffer can dare. 
Each old age of gold was an iron age too, 
And the weakest of saints may find stern work 
to do, 
In the day of the Lord at hand ! " 



VIII. 

THE STATESMEN. 



Yet remember all 
He spoke among you, and the man who spoke ; 
Who never sold the truth to save the hour 
Nor paltered with Eternal God for power. 

Tennyson. 

Nature, they say, doth dote, 

And cannot make a man 

Save on some worn-out plan 

Repeating us by rote. 

For him her old-world moulds aside she threw, 

And choosing sweet clay from the breast 

Of the unexhausted West, 

With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 

Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 

Lowell: on Abraham Lincoln. 

The goal of history is in the fulfilment of the highest 
political ideal. It is the holy city ; it is the new Jerusa- 
lem, the end of the toil and conflict of humanity. 

Mulford. 



VIII. 

THE STATESMEN. 

PHE highest practical work of the 
human mind is the organization of 
the State. It involves the profoundest 
thought and the most strenuous effort of 
which men are capable. A nation is the 
culmination of man's individual and social 
life. It is more than the assembling of 
men within certain lines of law; it is 
more than the forging of a compact be- 
tween citizens; it is more than a society 
for the promotion of trade or manufacture. 
It is the embodiment of the spirit and the 
laws of human life in statutes and insti- 
tutions; it is the organic growth, under 
human care and direction, of an extended 
political life; it is therefore the greatest 
organism which human thought and energy 
can produce. Thus it becomes the last 
and crowning manifestation in outward 
form of the thoughts, the convictions, the 
principles, and the spirit of a people. 



190 Christian typts of heroism* 

This truth at once sets forth the work of 
the statesman in its proper dignity and 
scope. It is a labor which properly be- 
longs to the very highest minds; it calls 
for the widest information and the broad- 
est candor ; it demands intense sympathy 
with the spirit of institutions and the genius 
of peoples. The statesman is more than a 
man who can manipulate social and politi- 
cal forces to the advantage of his nation. 
He is one who guides the currents of 
national life into the channels he builds 
out of institutions and laws, so that they 
go to swell the volume and the power of 
the world's life. He is endowed with the 
genius to see how the forces at work in his 
own age can be so directed and handled as 
to advance the interest of every human 
being. He need not be conscious always 
of the full meaning of his work ; he may 
not see or foresee its relations to man's 
political progress or his growth in civiliza- 
tion. But the true statesman is he to 
whom God has given a supreme instinct, 
a divinely guided judgment, which leads 
him to do that one thing which is the best 
for his own nation and the best for all 
nations. He is the man who can discern 



<t\)t Statesmen* 191 

the things which are essential, pre-eminent, 
absolutely needful to be done, and then 
bend strong energies to the achievement 
of them. His judgment singles out those 
stars in the heavens and those signs in the 
sea which guide man on the courses of 
God's providence, across the deeps of the 
long centuries, toward the haven of all 
nations and peoples. 

This, therefore, is a type of human char- 
acter in which these studies may fitly cul- 
minate. The statesman may be expected 
in every age of the world's history; his 
work will always be demanded. It is not 
limited to the period of human error and 
sinfulness. Its field is not restricted to the 
era of wars and rivalries, of selfish compe- 
titions and mutual fears. There will still 
be a necessity for it when the golden age 
has come and the nations learn war no 
more. Martyr and defender of the faith, 
hermit, monk, prelate, and knight are all 
ephemeral types, — the outgrowth of tran- 
sient conditions of human society. The 
reformer's work will end with the millennial 
reign of righteousness, and the missionary 
will have no call when all men know the 
Lord; but the statesman, the organizer 



192 Christian ^pes of ^erotem* 

of social forces, the pilot of great States, 
the architect of institutions, the builder of 
codes, statutes, constitutions, — he is a 
perennial type, necessary in any age, a 
figure destined to perpetual eminence. 
We may conceive of his existence even 
in that " society of perfect beings" which 
Renan conceives would be so feeble a 
brotherhood. He would still find a career 
in blazing the path of progress and in con- 
ducting the columns of the advancing peo- 
ple along the ever new way. A State of 
some sort, an outward organism embody- 
ing his political and social ideals, man must 
always have ; and the statesman must al- 
ways be forthcoming to arrange the ex- 
ternal life of the world in harmony with 
its principles and its ideals. It is perti- 
nent, then, to ask whether in his present 
status there has been any falling away 
from the virility and force which have 
been his leading traits in all past ages; 
whether the Christian spirit in tempering 
his nature and raising his ideals has abated 
his energy or reduced his personal vigor; 
whether his latest achievements disclose a 
dwindling manhood or foretell a day when 
he will exchange courage for amiability 



£tje Statesmen* 193 

and persistence for passivity; or whether 
we may still expect him, when the world 
has grown old in righteousness and ripe 
in the wisdom of the truth, to be the equal 
of the Caesars and the Charlemagnes, the 
Hamiltons and the Lincolns of earth's 
earlier days, — in Emerson's words, "with 
strength still equal to the time ; still wise 
to entertain and swift to execute the pol- 
icy which the mind and heart of mankind 
require." 

There are three particulars in which the 
statesman is called upon to exercise a 
strenuous courage and an inflexible pur- 
pose. He must be strong enough to have 
unwavering convictions ; he must be brave 
enough to disregard the clamor of igno- 
rance and of misapprehension ; and he 
must have a persistent faith which will 
carry him over every obstacle between 
him and the goal of his purpose. These 
are the indispensable traits of the mind 
which organizes great ideas into national 
life. They will fit the millennium as well 
as they serve the present day. 

The power to perceive the trend of the 
active forces of an age and foresee their 
results is a rare gift. Yet it is less rare 
13 



194 Christian £y$z$ of fymi&m. 

than the courage to stand unfalteringly by 
one's convictions when they are formed. 
Ten men will see the truth of a principle 
for one who will avow and abide by the 
consequences of his conviction. There is 
a timidity of custom, a cowardice in the 
face of a change of belief, which holds the 
vast majority of men in thrall. How vastly 
is the power of that fear enhanced when 
fidelity to that conviction may destroy the 
settled calm of established institutions, 
break in upon a hundred vested interests, 
or plunge a great people into the calami- 
ties of war ! Yet in this consists the very 
primary virtue of the statesman. He must 
follow the lead of his perceptions, at what- 
ever cost to personal comfort or the tem- 
porary tranquillity of others. Csesar at 
the Rubicon, taking all the hazards of 
that hidden way which led him to the im- 
perial throne and Rome to the mastery of 
the world, will always be the type of the 
statesman, with the instinct to perceive 
and the courage to take the only way by 
which the world can go on to its grander 
life. The early colonists of America, put- 
ting aside their old-world traditions and 
applying to their own communities new 



t\)t Statesmen* 195 

principles and practices, displayed the 
courage of the largest statesmanship. 
The framers of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence likewise evinced at once the 
strongest sense of the inevitable course of 
events and the stoutest courage of their 
convictions, when they declared the united 
colonies to be " free and independent 
States," affirming that " they are absolved 
from all allegiance to the British crown 
and that all political connection between 
them and the State of Great Britain is, and 
ought to be, totally dissolved. " It was no 
idle promise to pledge to the support of 
this act their lives, their fortunes, and their 
sacred honor. That vow was tested by the 
seven long years of peril, hardship, sacri- 
fice, and death which forever decided the 
new direction in which the world's politi- 
cal development should proceed. But 
only in this same way, by unflinching faith 
in great truths which have become clear 
to the mind and in the brave espousal of 
them without regard to consequences, can 
statesmanship ever secure its great end, — 
the elevation of man in the development 
of human institutions. 

So too the statesman must disregard 



196 Christian £ype£ of heroism* 

the clamor of ignorance and of misappre- 
hension which opposes every advance in 
thought or the founding of institutions. 
The moral and intellectual inertia of man, 
even in his best estate and when he is 
most sincere and devoted to truth and 
right, makes the task of a wise statesman- 
ship a test of heroic tenacity. Men will 
reject the most undoubted good when it 
comes in a novel guise or involves the try- 
ing changes of reform. John Fiske has 
well called the transition from the colonial 
to the constitutional government in Amer- 
ica " the critical period of American his- 
tory." It required years of debate and 
persistent agitation under the courageous 
leadership of Washington, Hamilton, and 
Madison to convert the American people 
to that theory of organization and govern- 
ment which has made our experiment so 
signal a success. Nor was the deliverance 
of the nation from the destructive element 
of internal slavery secured at any less 
price of brave effort, persistently made in 
the teeth of popular resistance. 

The third heroic trait in the statesman 
is the power of sustained perseverance in 
overcoming the natural obstacles and diffi- 



£\)t Statesmen* 197 

culties which must hinder the wisest policy 
and delay the most desirable changes. 
This, of course, is the test of all moral 
strength, which becomes conspicuous in 
the statesman because of the grand scale 
upon which his work is necessarily done 
and the strong light of publicity which 
shines upon him. When the elder Pitt 
said that he and he only could save Eng- 
land out of the perils she was in, there lay 
between him and his success the personal 
dislike of the King, a hostile majority in 
Parliament, and the armies and fleets of 
France. To overcome such obstacles, the 
common lot of all great statesmen, and to 
turn his very difficulties into splendid tri- 
umphs was a heavy tax upon even that 
indomitable spirit. So, too, the great 
Richelieu, bending all his genius toward 
effecting the unity of France, must over- 
come, in the attainment of his purpose, the 
unfriendliness of the Pope, an embittered 
queen, conspiring nobles, valiant Hugue- 
nots, the malice of Spain and of Italy. 
Over such impediments must these great 
guides of political destiny clamber, to at- 
tain the consummation of their far-reach- 
ing purposes. And the feat is no less 



198 Ctjrtettan £ppes of heroism* 

a one for the will and the moral nature 
than it is for the intellect. Time, civiliza- 
tion, Christianity, the millennial era itself, 
will abate none of these qualifications for 
the statesman, — the courage to believe, to 
resist pressure, and to overcome obstacles. 
The advance of Christian ideas and the 
increasing sway of the Christian spirit have 
gradually developed and elevated the char- 
acter of statesmanship. More and more 
its exercise has been in the behalf of right- 
eousness and the pure ideals of the gospel. 
The brotherhood of man gains increasing 
recognition with every revision of national 
codes and constitutions. Larger provision 
is made for peace and amity between the 
nations ; justice and righteousness are re- 
ceiving more than a nominal respect. 
Thus the work of the statesman grows 
more closely allied to the labors of the 
Church and its agents. For in the propor- 
tion in which the State incorporates Chris- 
tian principles into her organism, in that 
same proportion must those who guide 
her policy become the agents of the king- 
dom of heaven. It becomes therefore an 
interesting question whether, in the most 
enlightened nations of these latest Christian 



Ctje fytmemm. 199 

centuries, any examples have been given 
of what we may expect from a Christian 
statesman, and whether the men of this 
type who in their labors have shown the 
most sympathy with Christian ideals have 
shown any decadence in manly force. To 
answer this question we may profitably 
cite two signal examples from among the 
leaders in the statesmanship of the nine- 
teenth century, — Lincoln and Gladstone. 

If we were seeking for a case of a public 
man dominated by the broad and funda- 
mental principles of the Christian religion, 
a man whom no sect could claim, who 
nevertheless was deeply imbued with the 
essential spirit of the gospel, we might 
well rest our search at the name of Abra- 
ham Lincoln. He was a typical leader 
of men. He was the most conspicuous 
figure in a most critical period of national 
and international history; he was in the 
deepest sense of the word a religious man 
and a Christian man ; he carried through 
all the trials of his four years of responsi- 
bility, anxiety, and sacrifice an unswerving 
faith in the guidance of God and a stead- 
fast perception of the duty he owed to the 
Divine law. He was a man to whom the 



200 Christian £ppe0 of heroism* 

moral aspect of the great struggle always 
was foremost; nor could he ever, in any 
question of policy or of administration, 
divest himself of the sense of obligation 
to justice, righteousness, and love. He 
may unhesitatingly be taken as a type of 
the Christian statesman striving to em- 
body in the policy of a desperate hour 
fidelity to the highest law, the Divine 
will and commandment. How well he 
sustains the standards we have set up, a 
glance at his work will show. 

It was the mission of Abraham Lincoln 
to conserve the work of many centuries 
and many devoted heroes in the long 
struggle of mankind toward an era of uni- 
versal peace. The war which preserved 
the Union did much more than that; it 
preserved the work of ages. The Ameri- 
can Union is the culmination of a long 
series of political changes, away from that 
primeval condition of human society when 
there was in fact no society, but every 
man was for himself and against all his 
neighbors. Little by little, in the lapse 
of ages, larger and larger groups of men 
allied themselves for the sake of peace and 
security, that they might hold the turbu- 



t\)t Statesmen* 201 

lent in check while the necessary pursuits 
of life were followed. Family, clan, na- 
tion, — these were the successive steps 
by which men enlarged the scope of their 
alliances and compacts ; and with each 
step the tranquillity of the world in- 
creased, and a larger share of human life 
was spent in peace and its pursuits. At 
length the wisdom of the American people, 
embodied in the genius of Hamilton and 
Madison, framed the Constitution, and ad- 
vanced the human race one step further, 
by showing how separate States with all 
their own internal interests untouched 
could dwell in peaceful alliance. This 
was the solution of the last great problem 
in the quest for methods of peace and law 
among men. For it is evidence incontest- 
able, framed in a great State instrument 
and displayed in the continuous life of an 
entire nation, that States, like individuals, 
can decide their differences not by brutal 
war but by systematic legislation or a com- 
mon tribunal. The American Union is 
the highest political embodiment of Chris- 
tianity; it is the highest proof of the pos- 
sibility of a universal peace ; it is the 
most convincing test of man's capacity 



202 Christian typt& of fyttoi&m* 

for unity in diversity and diversity in 
unity. In this respect, this Union is the 
consummation of all the struggles of all 
men toward a state of universal peace. 
It is the hope and aspiration of mankind 
organized at length into a mighty nation. 

No less a work than this was put in 
peril by the Rebellion. A tremendous test 
was applied to this great experiment in 
government and in political life. Setting 
aside all involved and secondary issues, 
the one great question decided in that 
struggle was whether this peaceful com- 
pact should be maintained, — a light to the 
nations and a perennial force for their im- 
provement, — or whether its broken frag- 
ments should impede the progress of the 
whole human race. In the decision of 
that fateful question there was no more 
potent factor than the mind and will of 
Abraham Lincoln. He grasped the issue 
with unerring perception; with inflexible 
tenacity he persisted in the only course 
which could decide it aright. He kept 
before himself and he kept before the 
nation the one aim in which he and they 
must unite, — the preservation of the Union. 
The great principle that individual States 



£tie Statesmen* 203 

may exist in pacific federation must be 
maintained at any hazard. Abraham 
Lincoln felt the meaning of the crisis 
which had come to America better than 
almost any other man of his time. He 
had the instinct of the highest statesman- 
ship; he saw the one thing which was 
essential, pre-eminent, necessary. He had 
those moral qualities which we have de- 
cided are also to be looked for in the true 
statesman, — faith in his own conviction ; 
imperviousness to the outcry of less clear- 
sighted men, their distracting persuasions, 
their irritation, or their hate; and a heroism 
almost without parallel- in his patient and 
faithful adherence to this purpose through 
the four weary years of that exhausting 
struggle. Rarely has this world witnessed 
a sublimer spectacle than this simple, god- 
fearing man, holding fast to his one pur- 
pose of preserving the Union and moving 
unwaveringly on, through reverses and dis- 
appointments, harassed by treachery and 
indifference in camp and in counsel; har- 
ried by treason in the rear while he grap- 
pled with rebellion in the front; defied by 
foes, and mistrusted by friends ; true to his 
conviction, unmoved by opposition, undis- 



204 Christian typte of l^erotenu 

mayed by difficulties, until his wonderful 
task was done, and he had made secure 
the work which had cost the struggle and 
the sacrifice of the ages. All the adaman- 
tine firmness of the man is revealed in the 
words he uttered after four years of strug- 
gle and sacrifice, which discover a strength 
and a persistence as lasting as any trials 
it might be called to endure : " Fondly do 
we hope, fervently do we pray, that this 
mighty scourge of war may pass speedily 
away. Yet if God wills that it continue 
until all the wealth piled by the bondman's 
two hundred and fifty years of unrequited 
toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of 
blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by 
another drawn by the sword, as was said 
three thousand years ago so still it must be 
said, that the judgments of the Lord are true 
and righteous altogether." The statesman 
who could speak in such wise as that had 
lost none of the strength of manhood. 
His Christian spirit had engendered no 
feebleness of will ; he was as wise as he 
was honest, as courageous as he was wise, 
and as strong as he was courageous. 
There need be no misgivings about the 
millennium if such natures shall multiply. 



&)t fymtsmm. 205 

We find an equally impressive illustra- 
tion of this vigorous spontaneity and fresh- 
ness of manly spirit in the magnificent 
contest which for the last few years Eng- 
land's veteran statesman has kept up, in 
behalf of justice and a durable political 
arrangement between England and Ireland. 
There are many features of that battle 
which must extort a new admiration for 
the capacities of human nature from the 
most reluctant minds. The intellectual 
force of Mr. Gladstone would of itself en- 
title him to the highest distinction. His 
moral energy ranks him among the fore- 
most men of the Christian era. That a man 
of fourscore years — long past the age at 
which most men retire from the mere 
labor of thinking and still further past 
the time at which the vast majority excuse 
themselves from adopting new theories 
or sympathizing with new plans — should 
advance beyond all the limits of his previ- 
ous statesmanship and place himself at the 
head of his nation, in a severe and almost 
revolutionary crisis, is a noble demonstra- 
tion of a whole and vigorous intellect. But 
that a political leader, nearing the close 
of his career, should be willing to peril 



206 Christian typts of heroism* 

his name, his power, and his popularity by 
espousing a measure certain to be received 
by his countrymen with hostility, and 
perhaps rejected with bitterness, gives one 
a new faith that political disinterestedness 
is not an utterly unknown quantity. Yet 
Gladstone crowns his remarkable traits with 
an invincible faith, — all the more strik- 
ing as it stands in such marked contrast 
with the mood of his countrymen, — that 
human nature is the same in Ireland as 
it is elsewhere, and that it will respond 
to justice, fair-dealing, and generosity by 
loyalty and good-faith. He has brought 
imperishable renown to himself by a firm 
resistance to all the malice of partisan 
opposition and all the sincere hostility 
of an alarmed conservatism and selfish 
interest. In the face of all the obstacles 
his enemies have put in his way, he has 
persisted in his opposition to the policy 
of coercion and of force untempered by 
the higher views of justice. He stands 
to-day, pre-eminent among his contempora- 
ries in his embodiment of a manly trust 
in the inherent honesty of human hearts, 
in the conquering power of equity, and in 
a policy which will bear the most lasting 



<t\)t Statesmen* 207 

fruits of peace and national stability. He 
will be assigned a historic place among 
those who have been most eminent expo- 
nents of Christian principles as applied 
to the problems of statecraft, and hence 
as a representative of the vast gains man- 
kind has made in the spirit of the Christ. 
Measure Gladstone with Xerxes or Alaric, 
and one has some conception of the vast 
growth of human ideals toward the model 
of the Sermon on the Mount. In that same 
estimate may be seen the stability of the 
manly vigor which knows no decay, nay, 
which shows with an enhanced brilliancy 
after nearly twenty centuries of Christian 
tutelage. 

And now we leave this story of Chris- 
tian heroism, Christian character, Christian 
achievements. It has set forth but imper- 
fectly the types which Christian life has 
fostered. But has it not shown the favor 
and the encouragement which the Chris- 
tian spirit gives to the active virtues, and 
the perpetuity which it bestows upon them ? 
The test of the centuries has proved the 
power of Christianity to beget a manliness 
and a force as firm and as vigorous as any 
born of the old paganisms. The new cour- 



208 Christian typt<$ of heroism* 

age is as stout as the old ; the new heroes 
rival their ancestors in character. The 
expectation with which we entered on 
these studies is justified. The same strong 
traits reappear with each succeeding age, 
varying only to rise in dignity and refine- 
ment. Martyrs and defenders of the faith ; 
hermits and monks ; prelates and knights ; 
reformers and missionaries ; philanthropists 
and statesmen, — all have the same stout 
heart as beat in the breast of the primeval 
heroes. There is no waste of this ger- 
minal force from generation to generation. 
The Christian heroes display the spirit 
which all ages admire ; and in all the 
tenacity and force of the active virtues, 
in personal energy, in unflinching courage, 
in aggressiveness, resolution, daring, and 
persistence, they show a finer quality which 
rivals and outshines all the examples of 
the elder world. 

" They climbed the dizzy steep of heaven 
Through peril, toil, and pain. 
O God ! to us may grace be given 
To follow in their train." 



THE END. 






i 



